This book explores the lives and work of scientists who unraveled the mysteries of meningitis and describes the steps (and sometimes missteps) they used to accomplish their splendid achievements. Although symptoms of meningitis were recorded as early as the time of Hippocrates, its origin remained obscure. Then, in 1892, one of the bacteria that cause meningitis in children, Haemophilus influenzae, was discovered when Richard Pfeiffer saw it in material coughed up by a patient with influenza. Pfeiffer mistakenly thought the bacteria caused influenza, and it has carried that unfortunate, erroneous name since that time. Discovery, however, marched forward, and Quincke discovered how to obtain spinal fluid by inserting a needle between two bones in the patient’s back. Pittman discovered the sugar overcoat that protects H. influenzae from being eaten by white blood cells. Flexner managed epidemics of meningitis with serum from a horse. Griffith unknowingly stumbled on DNA, the master of all life. Weech gave the first antibiotic used in America to a little girl with meningitis. Alexander learned why antibiotics sometimes fail in such patients. Smith won the Nobel Prize for showing how DNA invades bacteria, the right conclusion for the wrong reasons. And four scientists, in two teams, vied to be the first to create the best vaccine to prevent meningitis in infants.