Finding an Antidote

Many years ago a medical missionary in China was doing research on a certain disease for which there had been no apparent cure. His laboratory experiments were not satisfactory, and he was making no progress. Finally he realized that the difficulty was caused by the lack of proper facilities for studying the germ. He had no laboratory in China that could afford the equipment he needed.

What could he do? His furlough was approaching and he knew that he had to leave China shortly. Because he did not want to abandon his task, he considered taking a man who had the disease to the United States so that he could be placed in a hospital for observation and investigation. Such procedure however was impossible because of immigration laws. His experiments seemed doomed to failure.

At last he hit upon a solution to the problem. When his family was at church on Sunday morning just before leaving for furlough, he went into the laboratory, took a vial of the germs, poured them into a glass of fruit juice, and calmly swallowed it.

Because the disease did not take hold immediately he passed the immigration authorities. But he was not long in the United States until he recognized in himself the symptoms of the disease. He went to the hospital and made himself the subject of the necessary medical research, with the result that an antidote was found for the malady.