Gentle Hunter
A Biography of Alice C. Evans, Bacteriologist
Excerpt from "Gentle Hunter":
On this July day
in 1886 five-year-old Alice Catherine
Evans awoke as a survivor of scarlet fever. Her older
brother, Morgan, ill at the same time, also recovered from
this bacterial disease. Some infants on a neighboring farm
died when diphtheria and scarlet fever struck at the same
time.
Its medical name is streptococcus pyogenes. It is a
social organism, that lives chain-linked together in colonies.
Little Alice did not know that this wildly infectious
streptococcus, which had nearly killed her, was one of the
families of microbes she would work to subdue some thirty
years later.
Nor did she know that she would become famous for a
discovery which would stun the medical world - a discovery
which would save millions of humans and animals from
death or a life of misery. Alice Evans would certify that
another disease, undulant fever, could be prevented. She
would triumph over powerful opponents, and in time,
largely because of her steadfast efforts, practices in public
health would change; pasteurization of all commercial
milk and its products would be required by law. Alice
Catherine Evans' superb contributions to medical science
would place her among the world's leading medical
researchers.
"I had
no thought of being anything
other than a teacher," Alice Evans said.
Alice was experiencing the
discrimination women endured in the
late 1800's when they chose to work
outside the home.
But this Pennsylvania farm girl's
intellect and superior upbringing within
her Welsh family had prepared her for
a higher destiny.
Gentle Hunter is Alice's inspiring
life story, one which peaked with her
momentous discovery that a certain
microbe was causing great suffering
and death throughout the world.
Science had named it the abortus
bacterium, a germ which is carried
from cows to humans and produces
undulant fever.
Alice's life as an imaginative
microbiologist/researcher, never
giving up in the face of powerful
opposition made her an international
heroine. Her discovery is recognized
to be the single most important
revelation of the first quarter of the
twentieth century.