Armstrong – Table of Contents

work. I know him also as an essentially human person, very modest, thoroughly kind,
completely unselfish and of unfailing equanimity.
“Your scientific achievements, Dr. Armstrong, have won for you a place in the
front rank of investigators, and your personal qualities endear you to scientist and layman
alike – to all who seek after truth.”
Armstrong accepted the Award with some brief, modest, gracious remarks, the
capstone of which was, “I have only been doing my day’s work.” He received
congratulatory letters from many sources, including prominent investigators in academic
positions, the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis and extensive press coverage
including The New York Times (8 A), The Washington Post (8 B), The Charlotte
Observer (North Carolina) (8C), and many other newspapers. The New York Times (8 A)
remarked that Armstrong did not speak of the dangers that were part of his day’s work.
The author quoted Armstrong’s friend, Paul DeKruif’s testimonial article in the Ladies
Home Journal written long before the Award to Armstrong became known: “On blue
days when the hunt for truth about people becomes futile, or when I fear the
consequences my more and more open expression of dangerous truth may have for me,
I’m bucked up by the memory of Charles Armstrong’s chuckle. After he had just dodged
dying from the parrot fever he was fighting, he came back to trap the deadly virus of
Saint Louis sleeping sickness. Then a mysterious brain malady, caught while studying his
sleeping sickness monkeys, knocked him over. But Armstrong got up off the floor.”
Armstrong contracted infection from many of the pathogens with which he worked, but
fortunately recovered from all of them. Some members of the press suggested
ungraciously at various times that Armstrong infected himself in order to study the