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was a probable stroke or at least an infarction that leriged in her chest and which, about a year later, resulted in a final stroke that killed her. I was desperate at the time, and I remember writing to Paul de Kruif, to the Head of the American Medical Association, who I think was Fishbein at the time, and the head of the Rockefeller Foundation, I think. I think it was Gregg. Anyway, they were the three people I considered the leaders in medicine, and I asked them what they knew about the treatment of stroke. There was evidently nothing that the doctors I knew could do, and I asked them what was being done in the field. And all wrote back to me and said nothing was being done; there was nothing you could do.

Well, this infuriated me further. I thought that was ridiculous. Other diseases could be treated and although there weren't terribly many specifics at this time, the sulfa drugs had come into existence. Vitamin deficiencies could be corrected, such as scurvy and pellagra. And I thought there was no good reason why you couldn't do something about stroke, because people didn't universally die of stroke; they might die of something else and they didn't universally die at the same time, therefore, there must be some element that was influential.

However, I didn't have any means for taking any particular steps about it.

Had you begun at this point to read about medical research?