Armstrong – Table of Contents

1930s on the attempts to prevent poliomyelitis in humans by chemical blockade of the
nose (see the chapter on Poliomyelitis). Dr. Armstrong may have suggested Dr. Schultz
for presentation of an outside of institution, objective, impartial analysis of the research.
After several months, Dr. Schultz could not corroborate any evidence that an infectious
agent producing colds was ever isolated in eggs. At one point in his investigation, a
rumor circulated that something might be growing in eggs but there was no substantial
confirmation of this rumor.
A non-event occurred possibly as a result of the cloudy circumstances
surrounding the entirety of the controversial common cold research. Dr. Norman
Topping, the Associate Director, did not become Director of the NIH when Dr. R. E.
Dyer retired in1951. In his last few years at NIH, Topping was actively involved in
planning for the new Clinical Center, the new special Institutes, physical structures,
research goals, and a myriad of other administrative functions. In 1952, Topping left NIH
to become Vice President for Medical Affairs at the University of Pennsylvania where he
remained for six years. In 1958, he returned to his alma mater, the University of Southern
California, where he had an illustrious career, including President, until he retired. In his
autobiography (50), Topping described, in some detail, the reasons, primarily political,
why he did not become Director of NIH without mentioning in that discussion his
association with the cold virus research. Dr. William H. Sebrell succeeded Dr. Dyer as
Director of NIH in 1951 with Topping and Dr. David E. Price as Associate Directors. Dr.
Sebrell was a young associate of Dr. Joseph Goldberger, of pellagra prevention fame, in
the old Hygienic Laboratory. He was the Director of the Experimental Biology and
Medicine Institute before that morphed into the National Institute of Arthritis and