Adventures of Mr. X. I
...X was born in Montreal, the son of French emigrants. From 7 to 17 years of age, X attended school in Paris. In the fall of 1891, X traveled to Bonn where he attended lectures at the University of Bonn "for several months." Thus, X only obtained a high school education and was self-taught in the sciences. After finishing school, he traveled through South America. Afterwards, he continued his travels through Europe, including Turkey, where he, at 20 years of age, met his wife.
At age 24, now father of a daughter, X moved back to Canada. He built a home laboratory and studied microbiology from books and his own experiments. He earned a commission from the Canadian government to study the fermentation and distillation of maple syrup to schnapps. Together with his brother, he invested almost all his money in a chocolate factory, which soon went bankrupt.
During this period, X published his first scientific paper. In this paper X contended that carbon was a compound, not an element.
With his money almost gone and his second daughter born, he took a contract with the government of Guatemala. He studied a local fungal infection of coffee plants, and discovered that acidifying the soil could serve as an effective treatment. As a side job, he was asked to find a way to make whiskey from bananas.
In 1907, he moved to a sisal plantation near Mérida, Yucatán. In 1909, he had successfully established a method to produce sisal schnapps.
Machines for mass production of sisal schnapps were ordered in Paris; in his spare time, he worked for free in a laboratory at the Pasteur Institute. He was soon offered the job of running the new Mexican plant, but declined, considering it "too boring". He did, however, take the time to attempt stopping a locust plague at the plantation using their own diseases. He extracted bacteria pathogenic to locusts from their guts.
X moved to Paris in early 1911, where he worked again as an unpaid assistant in a lab at the Pasteur Institute. He got attention in the scientific community the same year, when the results of his successful attempt to counter the Mexican locust plague with Coccobacillus were published.
At the end of the year, X was in Argentina, where he was offered a chance to test these results on a much larger scale. Thus, in 1912 and 1913, he fought the Argentinian locust plagues with coccobacillus experiments. Even though Argentina claimed his success was inconsistent, he himself declared it a full success, and was subsequently invited to other countries to demonstrate the method.
During WWI, X produced over 12 million doses of medication for the allied military.
The discovery of "an invisible, antagonistic microbe of the dysentery bacillus" [phages] by X was announced on September 3, 1917. X claimed that it was a biological organism that reproduces, somehow feeding off bacteria.
In 1920, X travelled to Indochina, pursuing studies of cholera and the plague, from where he returned at the end of the year. X, officially still an unpaid assistant, found himself without a lab as a result of a quarrel with the assistant director of the Pasteur Institute. The biologist Edouard Pozerski lent him a stool (literally) in his laboratory. In 1921, he managed to publish a monograph, The Bacteriophage: Its Role in Immunity about his works.
Phage therapy soon became a boom, and a great hope in medicine. In 1925, X received the honorary doctorate of the University of Leiden, as well as the Leeuwenhoek medal.
After holding a temporary position at the University of Leiden, X got a position with the Conseil Sanitaire, Maritime et Quarantenaire d'Egypte in Alexandria. The Conseil was put in place to prevent plague and cholera spreading to Europe. X used phages he collected from plague-infected rats during his 1920 visit to Indochina on human plague patients, with claimed success. The British Empire initiated a vast campaign against plague based on his results.
In 1927, X had been offered a professorship at Yale University, which he accepted. Meanwhile, European and US pharmaceutical companies had taken up the production of own phage medicine, and were promising impossible effects. All this led to important parts of the scientific community turning against X, who, known for his temper, had made not a few enemies.
In 1934, he went to Tbilisi, Georgia. X was welcomed to the Soviet Union as a hero, bringing the knowledge of salvation from diseases ravaging the eastern states all the way to Russia. He was enamored of communism, and he was happy to be working with his friend, Prof. George Eliava. Eliava had become friendly with X during a visit to the Pasteur Institute.
X dedicated one of his books, "The Bacteriophage and the Phenomenon of Recovery," written and published in Tbilisi in 1935, to Comrade Stalin. He had planned to take up permanent residence in Tbililsi. But just then, his friend Eliava fell in love with the woman with whom the head of the secret police, Lavrenty Beria also happened to be in love, and Eliava's fate was sealed. X ran for his life, then WWII began.
X was kept under house arrest by the German "Wehrmacht" in Vichy, France. He used the time to write his book "The Value of Experiment", as well as his memoirs, the latter cointaining 800 pages. He was striken with pancreatic cancer and died a forgotten man in Paris in 1949. He was buried in Saint-Mards-en-Othe in the department of the Aube in France.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%A9lix_d%27H%C3%A9relle
At age 24, now father of a daughter, X moved back to Canada. He built a home laboratory and studied microbiology from books and his own experiments. He earned a commission from the Canadian government to study the fermentation and distillation of maple syrup to schnapps. Together with his brother, he invested almost all his money in a chocolate factory, which soon went bankrupt.
During this period, X published his first scientific paper. In this paper X contended that carbon was a compound, not an element.
With his money almost gone and his second daughter born, he took a contract with the government of Guatemala. He studied a local fungal infection of coffee plants, and discovered that acidifying the soil could serve as an effective treatment. As a side job, he was asked to find a way to make whiskey from bananas.
In 1907, he moved to a sisal plantation near Mérida, Yucatán. In 1909, he had successfully established a method to produce sisal schnapps.
Machines for mass production of sisal schnapps were ordered in Paris; in his spare time, he worked for free in a laboratory at the Pasteur Institute. He was soon offered the job of running the new Mexican plant, but declined, considering it "too boring". He did, however, take the time to attempt stopping a locust plague at the plantation using their own diseases. He extracted bacteria pathogenic to locusts from their guts.
X moved to Paris in early 1911, where he worked again as an unpaid assistant in a lab at the Pasteur Institute. He got attention in the scientific community the same year, when the results of his successful attempt to counter the Mexican locust plague with Coccobacillus were published.
At the end of the year, X was in Argentina, where he was offered a chance to test these results on a much larger scale. Thus, in 1912 and 1913, he fought the Argentinian locust plagues with coccobacillus experiments. Even though Argentina claimed his success was inconsistent, he himself declared it a full success, and was subsequently invited to other countries to demonstrate the method.
During WWI, X produced over 12 million doses of medication for the allied military.
The discovery of "an invisible, antagonistic microbe of the dysentery bacillus" [phages] by X was announced on September 3, 1917. X claimed that it was a biological organism that reproduces, somehow feeding off bacteria.
In 1920, X travelled to Indochina, pursuing studies of cholera and the plague, from where he returned at the end of the year. X, officially still an unpaid assistant, found himself without a lab as a result of a quarrel with the assistant director of the Pasteur Institute. The biologist Edouard Pozerski lent him a stool (literally) in his laboratory. In 1921, he managed to publish a monograph, The Bacteriophage: Its Role in Immunity about his works.
Phage therapy soon became a boom, and a great hope in medicine. In 1925, X received the honorary doctorate of the University of Leiden, as well as the Leeuwenhoek medal.
After holding a temporary position at the University of Leiden, X got a position with the Conseil Sanitaire, Maritime et Quarantenaire d'Egypte in Alexandria. The Conseil was put in place to prevent plague and cholera spreading to Europe. X used phages he collected from plague-infected rats during his 1920 visit to Indochina on human plague patients, with claimed success. The British Empire initiated a vast campaign against plague based on his results.
In 1927, X had been offered a professorship at Yale University, which he accepted. Meanwhile, European and US pharmaceutical companies had taken up the production of own phage medicine, and were promising impossible effects. All this led to important parts of the scientific community turning against X, who, known for his temper, had made not a few enemies.
In 1934, he went to Tbilisi, Georgia. X was welcomed to the Soviet Union as a hero, bringing the knowledge of salvation from diseases ravaging the eastern states all the way to Russia. He was enamored of communism, and he was happy to be working with his friend, Prof. George Eliava. Eliava had become friendly with X during a visit to the Pasteur Institute.
X dedicated one of his books, "The Bacteriophage and the Phenomenon of Recovery," written and published in Tbilisi in 1935, to Comrade Stalin. He had planned to take up permanent residence in Tbililsi. But just then, his friend Eliava fell in love with the woman with whom the head of the secret police, Lavrenty Beria also happened to be in love, and Eliava's fate was sealed. X ran for his life, then WWII began.
X was kept under house arrest by the German "Wehrmacht" in Vichy, France. He used the time to write his book "The Value of Experiment", as well as his memoirs, the latter cointaining 800 pages. He was striken with pancreatic cancer and died a forgotten man in Paris in 1949. He was buried in Saint-Mards-en-Othe in the department of the Aube in France.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%A9lix_d%27H%C3%A9relle