Introduction...........................................................................................................
I first became acquainted with Dr. Charles Armstrong in January 1948. It was
during the year of my internal medicine internship in 1947-1948 at the Robert Dawson
Evans Memorial Hospital (then Massachusetts Memorial), now University Hospital, a
component of Boston University Medical Center. Influenced during my previous training
by charismatic teachers of laboratory and clinical microbiology, I became attracted to the
possibility of pursuing a career in the study of infectious diseases. Fortunately, I
encountered a benefactor in the person of Dr. William Lane Hewitt who was then a
Fellow in Medicine at the Evans. He was working on the wards of the hospital, and he
was also assisting Dr. Chester S. Keefer in the analysis of the therapeutic value of the
antibiotic, streptomycin, in the first 3000 cases. They were performing this project under
a producer’s grant to the Committee on Chemotherapy, Division of Medical Sciences of
the National Research Council. Dr. Hewitt also held the rank of Surgeon (equivalent to a
Naval lieutenant-commander or an Army major) in the Commissioned Corps of the
United Public Health Service. He had also worked at the National Institute of Health for
about six years (2). During the course of our professional association, which was
extremely cordial, he became aware of my interest in infections.
Initially, he suggested that I start a project in my “off-duty hours” with the
hospital’s chief bacteriologist to see if I could help isolate “L-forms” (cell wall-deficient
bacteria that did not grow in conventional bacteriological media) from a patient with
blood culture-negative infective endocarditis (infection of a heart valve). This project,