In 1878 young Doctor William Welch joined the faculty of a New York medical school under severe handicaps. He taught experimental pathology, a subject considered so trivial by the authorities of the day that the school gave him only twenty-five dollars to equip a laboratory. He had to make crude instruments and capture his own frogs for specimens. Years later, despite this small beginning—with a scalpel, slides and a microscope—Dr. Welch was to change the entire structure of American medicine.

The son of a doctor, Welch observed that physicians were content to treat their patients mostly by guesswork. After he entered medical school, he became even more concerned with this ignorance of scientific medicine. He went to Germany and studied under the most distinguished research men in the world. Inspired by the precise methods and spirit of inquiry he found there, Welch came home determined to teach American doctors to adopt high standards of research.

Older doctors, steeped in tradition, scoffed at such unorthodox theories as Welch's belief that microorganisms caused typhoid and diphtheria. But their scorn changed to admiration, for the accuracy of Welch's discoveries earned him wide recognition. His greatest dream was realized when he was offered the chair of pathology and a splendid laboratory at John Hopkins. Before long Welch's ideas and methods were copied by every medical school in the country. He became an advisor to presidents, and to the most influential men of his age. With their help he launched vigorous programs to attack disease on a world-wide scale, from the scourge of yellow fever in Panama to gangrene-infected soldiers of World War I.

William Welch's career was long and illustrious. His achievements were world-renowned, and he received many honors. Dauntless and determined, he waged a battle almost single-handed against the diseases that had crippled man.

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