David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants

take out the gauze—and the bleeding
would start all over again. The goal of
the second floor was to find a cure for
leukemia. But the problem was that
controlling the bleeding was so difficult
that most of the children were dead
before anyone could figure out how to
help them.
“When they came to the hospital,
ninety percent of the kids would be dead
in six weeks,” Freireich said. “They
would bleed to death. If you’re bleeding
in your mouth and nose, then you can’t
eat. You stop eating. You try to drink.
You gag. You vomit. You get diarrhea
from the blood in the stools. So you
starve to death. Or you get an infection
and then you get pneumonia, then you get