impression on Clifford Matheson.

Rivière had come to an accidental death on a holiday with his brother in
the wilds of northern Canada. Few knew of it beyond Matheson.

The financier had been drawn towards one special problem of science, and
on this he had studied deeply the last few years. From his studies, an
idea had developed which could only be worked out by experiments. Many
years of patient research would be needed, for this thought-child of
Matheson's was a master-idea, an idea which meant the exploring of a
practically uncharted sea of knowledge.

In brief, it was an attack of root-problem of human disease. Doctors and
pathologists had hitherto been viewing disease from the aspect of its
myriad effects on the highly complex human being. It was as though one
were to attempt to understand the subtleties of some full-grown language
without first learning its elementary grammar--the foundations on which
its super-structure is reared.

Now Matheson, coming to the problem with a strong, fresh mind unhampered
by the swaddling clothes of a college training, saw it from a view-point
entirely different to that of the doctors. He wanted to know the
elementary grammar of human disease. He found that no book dealt with
it--nor attempted to deal with it. No recognized department of a medical
course took as its province the root-causes of disease. Pathology was a
study of effects. Bacteriology--that again was merely a study of
effects.

He had read widely amongst a variety of scientific research-matter, and
had found that here and there an isolated attack was being made on the