Armstrong – Table of Contents

sharply with Leon Atlas’. Dr. Hottle had been assigned to the Laboratory of Infectious
Diseases for several years. At a viral research meeting that the author attended at the
Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR), Atlas, without presenting supporting
data, verbally announced his “chemical test.” Dr. Joel Warren, an experienced virologist,
who was then associated with Dr. Joseph Smadel at Walter Reed, expressed his
astonishment and exclaimed, “If this is true, then it is a bomb shell advance in virology.”
And, so it went. Volunteers were “infected” with “colds”, and “viruses revealed” their
presence chemically in the chicken egg. On rare occasions Atlas would boastfully join the
luncheon group meeting in the conference room in Building No. 7. On one occasion, Dr.
Jack Utz, who was well acquainted with Atlas, remarked. “Leon! Some day the bubble is
going to burst.” Among the senior investigators in Building No. 7 there was much
skepticism about the common cold study both from the scientific and administrative
aspects. Many of them felt that a stronger, less volatile hand was needed at the helm to
provide adequate direction, but the study supervisor in the “front office” (Dr. Norman
Topping) would not tolerate interference.
Some time in early 1951, an English physician associated with Sir Christopher
Andrewes, the most prominent investigator of the common cold, visited the National
Institutes of Health. Dr. Andrewes group operated the Common Cold Unit in Salisbury,
England and had made many careful clinical and epidemiological observations of colds in
volunteers given infected nose or throat washings. The visitor requested a meeting with
Dr. Atlas since, apparently, word of Atlas’ work had spread to England. Specifically, he
asked to see the volunteer program at Lorton and to see the induction of colds in patients.
After several days of observation, he returned to NIH, and said, the author believes, to