The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer (94 page)

80
Life is . . . a chemical incident:
Martha Marquardt,
Paul Ehrlich
(New York: Schuman, 1951), 11. Also see Frederick H. Kasten, “Paul Ehrlich: Pathfinder in Cell Biology,”
Biotechnic & Histochemistry
71, no. 1 (1996).

81
Between 1851 and 1857:
Phyllis Deane and William Alan Cole,
British Economic Growth, 1688–1959: Trends and Structure
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 210.

81
By the 1850s, that proportion had peaked:
Stanley D. Chapman,
The Cotton Industry: Its Growth and Impact, 1600–1935
(Bristol: Thoemmes, 1999), v–xviii.

81
Cloth dyes had to be extracted:
A. S. Travis,
The Rainbow Makers: The Origins of the Synthetic Dyestuffs Industry in Western Europe
(Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press, 1993), 13.

81
ever-popular calico prints:
Ibid.

81
“half of a small but long-shaped room”:
William Cliffe, “The Dyemaking Works of Perkin and Sons, Some Hitherto Unrecorded Details,”
Journal of the Society of Dyers and Colorists
73 (1957): 313–14.

82
In 1883, the German output of alizarin:
Travis,
Rainbow Makers
, 195.

83
“most impudent, ignorant, flatulent, fleshy”:
H. A. Colwell, “Gideon Harvey: Sidelights on Medical Life from the Restoration to the End of the XVII Century,”
Annals of Medical History
3, no. 3 (1921): 205–37.

83
“None of these compounds have, as yet”:
“Researches Conducted in the Laboratories of the Royal College of Chemistry,”
Reports of the Royal College of Chemistry and Researches Conducted in the Laboratories in the Years 1845–6–7
(London: Royal College of Chemistry, 1849), liv; Travis,
Rainbow Makers
, 35.

83
In 1828, a Berlin scientist named Friedrich Wöhler:
Friedrich Wöhler, “Ueber künst
liche Bildung des Harnstoffs,”
Annalen der Physik und Chemie
87, no. 2 (1828): 253–56.

84
In 1878, in Leipzig, a twenty-four-year-old:
Paul Ehrlich, “Über das Methylenblau und Seine Klinisch-Bakterioskopische Verwerthung,”
Zeitschrift für Klinische Medizin
2 (1882): 710–13.

84
In 1882, working with Robert Koch:
Paul Ehrlich, “Über die Färbung der Tuberkelbazillen,”
Deutsche Medizinische Wochenschrift
8 (1882): 269.

85
“
It has occurred to me”:
Marquardt,
Paul Ehrlich
, 91.

85
His laboratory was now physically situated:
Travis,
Rainbow Makers
, 97.

86
On April 19, 1910, at the densely packed:
See Felix Bosch and Laia Rosich, “The Contributions of Paul Ehrlich to Pharmacology,”
Pharmacology
(2008): 82, 171–79.

86
“
syphilis—the “secret malady”:
Linda E. Merians, ed.,
The Secret Malady: Venereal Disease in Eighteenth-Century Britain and France
(Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1996). Also see Ehrlich, “A Lecture on Chemotherapeutics,”
Lancet
, ii, 445.

87
Ehrlich and Kaiser Wilhelm: M. Lawrence Podolsky,
Cures out of Chaos: How Unexpected Discoveries Led to Breakthroughs in Medicine and Health
(Amsterdam: Overseas Publishers Association, 1997), 273.

88
“thick, yellowish green cloud”:
Richard Lodoïs Thoumin,
The First World War
(New York: Putnam, 1963), 175.

88
In 1919, a pair of American pathologists:
E. B. Krumbhaar and Helen D. Krumbhaar, “The Blood and Bone Marrow in Yellow Cross Gas (Mustard Gas) Poisoning: Changes Produced in the Bone Marrow of Fatal Cases,”
Journal of Medical Research
40, no. 3 (1919): 497–508.

Poisoning the Atmosphere

89
“What if this mixture do not work at all?:
William Shakespeare,
Romeo and Juliet
, act 4, scene 3 (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1913), 229.

89
We shall so poison the atmosphere:
Robert Nisbet, “Knowledge Dethroned: Only a Few Years Ago, Scientists, Scholars and Intellectuals Had Suddenly Become the New Aristocracy. What Happened?”
New York Times
, September 28, 1975.

89
Every drug, the sixteenth-century:
W. Pagel,
Paracelsus: An Introduction to Philosophical Medicine in the Era of the Renaissance
, 2nd ed. (New York: Karger, 1982), 129–30.

89
On December 2, 1943:
D. M. Saunders, “The Bari Incident,”
United States Naval Institute Proceedings
(Annapolis: United States Naval Institute, 1967).

89
Of the 617 men rescued:
Guy B. Faguet,
The War on Cancer: An Anatomy of Failure, A Blueprint for the Future
(New York: Springer, 2005), 71.

90
Goodman and Gilman weren’t interested:
Alfred Gilman, “Therapeutic Applications of Chemical Warfare Agents,”
Federation Proceedings
5 (1946): 285–92; Alfred Gilman and Frederick S. Philips, “The Biological Actions and Therapeutic Applications of the B-Chloroethyl Amines and Sulfides,”
Science
103, no. 2675 (1946): 409–15; Louis Goodman et al., “Nitrogen Mustard Therapy: Use of Methyl-Bis(Beta-Chlorethyl)amine Hydrochloride and Tris(Beta-Chloroethyl)amine Hydrochloride for Hodgkin’s Disease, Lymphosarcoma, Leukemia and Certain Allied and Miscellaneous Disorders,”
Journal of the American Medical Association
132, no. 3 (1946): 126–32.

91
George Hitchings had also:
Grant Taylor,
Pioneers in Pediatric Oncology
(Houston: University
of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, 1990), 137. Also see Tonse N. K. Raju, “The Nobel Chronicles,”
Lancet
355, no. 9208 (1999): 1022; Len Goodwin, “George Hitchings and Gertrude Elion—Nobel Prizewinners,”
Parasitology Today
5, no. 2 (1989): 33.

91
“Scientists in academia stood disdainfully”:
John Laszlo,
The Cure of Childhood Leukemia
(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1995), 65.

92
Instead of sifting through mounds:
Gertrude B. Elion, “Nobel Lecture in Physiology or Medicine—1988. The Purine Path to Chemotherapy,”
In Vitro Cellular and Developmental Biology
25, no. 4 (1989): 321–30; Gertrude B. Elion, George H. Hitchings, and Henry Vanderwerff, “Antagonists of Nucleic Acid Derivatives: VI. Purines,”
Journal of Biological Chemistry
192 (1951): 505. Also see Tom Brokaw,
The Greatest Generation
(1998; reprint, 2004), 304.

92
In the early 1950s, two physician-scientists:
Joseph Burchenal, Mary L. Murphy, et al., “Clinical Evaluation of a New Antimetabolite, 6-Mercaptopurine, in the Treatment of Leukemia and Allied Diseases,”
Blood
8 no. 11 (1953): 965–99.

The Goodness of Show Business

93
The name “Jimmy” is a household word in New England:
George E. Foley,
The Children’s Cancer Research Foundation: The House That “Jimmy” Built: The First Quarter-Century
(Boston: Sidney Farber Cancer Institute, 1982).

93
I’ve made a long voyage:
Maxwell E. Perkins, “The Last Letter of Thomas Wolfe and the Reply to It,”
Harvard Library Bulletin
, Autumn 1947, 278.

94
artificial respirator known as the iron lung:
Philip Drinker and Charles F. McKhann III, “The Use of a New Apparatus for the Prolonged Administration of Artificial Respiration: I. A Fatal Case of Poliomyelitis,”
Journal of the American Medical Association
92: 1658–60.

94
Polio research was shaken out of its torpor:
For a discussion of the early history of polio, see Naomi Rogers,
Dirt and Disease: Polio before FDR
(Rutgers: Rutgers University Press, 1992). Also see Tony Gould,
A Summer Plague: Polio and Its Survivors
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995).

94
Within a few weeks, 2,680,000 dimes:
Kathryn Black,
In the Shadow of Polio: A Personal and Social History
(New York: Perseus Books, 307), 25; Paul A. Offit,
The Cutter Incident: How America’s First Polio Vaccine Led to the Growing Vaccine Crisis
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005);
History of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis Records; Volume II: Raising Funds to Fight Infantile Paralysis, Book 2
(March of Dimes Archives, 1957), 256–60.

95
Please take care of my baby. Her name is Catherine:
Variety, the Children’s Charity, “Our History,” http://www.usvariety.org/about_history.html (accessed November 11, 2009).

96
“Well, I need a new microscope”:
Robert Cooke,
Dr. Folkman’s War: Angiogenesis and the Struggle to Defeat Cancer
(New York: Random House, 2001), 115.

96
money and netted $45,456:
Foley,
Children’s Cancer Research Foundation
(Boston: Sidney Farber Cancer Institute, 1982).

96
Gustafson was quiet:
Phyllis Clauson, interview with author, July 2009; Karen Cummins, interview with author, July 2009. Also see Foley,
Children’s Cancer Research Foundation
.

97
On May 22, 1948, on a warm Saturday night in the Northeast:
The original broadcast
recording can be accessed on the Jimmy Fund website at http://www.jimmyfund.org/abo/broad/jimmybroadcast.asp. Also see Saul Wisnia,
Images of America: The Jimmy Fund of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
(Charleston, SC: Arcadia, 2002), 18–19.

99
Jimmy’s mailbox was inundated:
Foley,
Children’s Cancer Research Foundation
.

99
the Manhattan Project spent:
See “The Manhattan Project, An Interactive History,” U.S. Department of Energy, Office of History, 2008.

99
In 1948, Americans spent more than $126 million:
Mark Pendergrast,
For God, Country and Coca-Cola:
The Definitive History of the Great American Soft Drink and the Company That Makes It
(New York: Basic Books, 2000), 212.

The House That Jimmy Built

101
Etymologically, patient means sufferer:
Susan Sontag,
Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors
(New York: Picador, 1990), 125.

101
Sidney Farber’s entire purpose:
Medical World News
, November 25, 1966.

101
“One assistant and ten thousand mice”:
George E. Foley,
The Children’s Cancer Research Foundation: The House That “Jimmy” Built: The First Quarter-Century
(Boston: Sidney Farber Cancer Institute, 1982).

101
“Most of the doctors”:
Name withheld, a hospital volunteer in the 1950s to 1960s, interview with author, May 2001.

102
In 1953, when the Braves franchise left:
“Braves Move to Milwaukee; Majors’ First Shift since ’03,”
New York Times
, March 19, 1953.

102
the Jimmy Fund planned a “Welcome Home, Ted” party:
“Dinner Honors Williams: Cancer Fund Receives $150,000 from $100-Plate Affair,”
New York Times
, August 18, 1953.

102
Funds poured in from:
Foley,
Children’s Cancer Research Foundation
.

102
“You can take the child out of the Depression”:
Robin Pogrebin and Timothy L. O’Brien, “A Museum of One’s Own,”
New York Times
, December 5, 2004.

103
“If a little girl got attached to a doll”:
“Medicine: On the Track,”
Time
, January 21, 1952.

103
“Once I discover that almost all”:
Jeremiah Goldstein, “Preface to My Mother’s Diary,”
Journal of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology
30, no. 7 (2008): 481–504.

104
“Acute leukemia,” he wrote:
Sidney Farber, “Malignant Tumors of Childhood,”
CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians
(1953): 3, 106–7.

104
The money that he had raised:
Sidney Farber letter to Mary Lasker, August 19, 1955.

PART TWO:
AN IMPATIENT WAR

105
Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin:
Franz Kafka,
The Great Wall of China and Other Pieces
(London: Secker and Warburg, 1946), 142.

105
The 325,000 patients with cancer:
Sidney Farber, quoted in Guy B. Faguet,
The War on Cancer: An Anatomy of Failure, a Blueprint for the Future
(New York: Springer, 2005), 97.

“They form a society”

107
All of this demonstrates why:
Michael B. Shimkin, “As Memory Serves—an Informal History of the National Cancer Institute, 1937–57,”
Journal of the National Cancer Institute
59 (suppl. 2) (1977): 559–600.

107
I am aware of some alarm:
Senator Lister Hill, “A Strong Independent Cancer Agency,” October 5, 1971, Mary Lasker Papers.

107
“Americans of all ages”:
Alexis de Tocqueville,
Democracy in America
(New York, Penguin), 296.

108
a woman who “could sell”:
Mary Lasker Oral History Project, Part 1, Session 1, p. 3, http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/digital/collections/nny/laskerm/transcripts/laskerm_1_1_3.html.

109
In 1939, Mary Woodard met Albert Lasker:
Ibid., p. 56.

109
“salesmanship in print”:
Stephen R. Fox,
The Mirror Makers: A History of American Advertising and Its Creators
(New York: William Morrow, 1984), 51.

109
they were married just fifteen months after:
Mary Lasker Oral History Project, Part 1, Session 3, p. 80.