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

were never given in combination. You
gave a second antibiotic only when the
first one stopped working. “One of the
first things Jay said to us was, no deal,”
DeVita remembered. “These kids spike
a fever, you treat them immediately, and
you treat them with combinations of
antibiotics, because they’re going to be
dead in three hours if you don’t.” DeVita
had an antibiotic that he had been told
should never be administered in the
spinal fluid. Freireich told him to give it
to a patient—in the spinal fluid.
“Freireich told us to do things,” DeVita
said, “that we had been taught were
heretical.
“He was subject to so much