They also recognized their failures. They had lost their illusions. They had entered the first decades of the twentieth century confident that science, even if its victories remained limited, would triumph. Now Victor Vaughan told a colleague, “Never again allow me to say that medical science is on the verge of conquering disease.” With the contempt one reserves for one’s own failings, he also said, “Doctors know no more about this flu than fourteenth-century Florentine doctors had known about the Black Death.” But they had not quit. Now this scientific brotherhood was beginning its hunt. It
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