In 1891, a man could plunge a syringe loaded with toxic bacteria into the neck of another man — simply on a hunch.
In May of that year, William B. Coley was the man holding that dubious syringe in the apartment of a 35-year-old Italian immigrant and drug addict named Zola. Poor Zola was told he might have only weeks to live due to an egg-size, inoperable tumor obstructing his pharynx, making it impossible for him to swallow food. Zola’s last shot at survival was in the hands of Coley, a 29-year-old bone surgeon who had just completed his training at New York Memorial Hospital. The young surgeon believed he was holding a cure for cancer in that syringe.
Coley was fascinated by a smattering of curious cancer stories referenced in the medical literature of the era: Patients riddled with inoperable tumors suddenly found themselves cancer-free after contracting erysipelas, another potentially fatal ailment at the time, caused by Streptococcus bacteria and marked by fever and hardened, painful rashes. Coley unearthed 47 similar cases and grew so intrigued by the apparent link that he scoured the ghettos of New York’s Lower East Side to find a German immigrant whose cancer had disappeared, according to medical records, after contracting erysipelas following several failed attempts to remove his tumor. Coley eventually found his man, scars and all, who was free of disease and in good health — seven years after doctors considered his case hopeless.
That was all Coley needed to proceed directly to human trials, and Zola would become his first test subject. Coley filled a syringe with living Streptococcus pyogenes, known to induce erysipelas attacks, and injected the solution directly into Zola’s tumor. It took awhile — in fact, it took repeated injections over five months — but finally, an hour after one particular injection in October, Zola broke out into sweaty chills, and his body temperature soared to 105 degrees.
