Edward Trudeau dedicated his life to fighting the most fearful disease of the nineteenth century—tuberculosis. Though he himself was its victim, doomed to illness and plagued by poverty, he founded America's first tuberculosis sanitarium at Saranac Lake.

Trudeau's entire life was a search. As a young man in New York City, he searched his own troubled heart, wondering why he could not decide on a career, why there seemed to be no special niche for him. When his beloved brother died of tuberculosis, he knew with sudden, passionate conviction that one search was over and another had begun. He would become a doctor and seek a cure for "The Great White Plague".

At medical school Trudeau studied physiology, anatomy, pathology—all channeled toward hunting the killer, tuberculosis. Then, ironically, he himself contracted the disease. At twenty-six his career was over. Unless he left his practice and withdrew from normal activities, he might die within months.

Within months Trudeau discovered more about tuberculosis than most scientists had learned in years of research. He found that, contrary to medical opinion, a cold mountain climate eased his condition and that rest was essential. With his wife and children he settled at Saranac Lake, a wilderness village in the Adirondacks. His own illness was arrested but he wanted to help others, particularly the poor city patients whose slum lives seemed to breed the disease. He begged funds and gradually, almost miraculously, his sanitarium was built, the first of its kind in America.

Trudeau continued his search for a tuberculosis cure, but he was hampered by lack of laboratory experience and passed a one-year bacteriology course in two weeks. He built his laboratory and was deep in experiments when his daughter fell gravely ill—of tuberculosis. Now, more than ever, he must find a cure, racing time . . .

In a sense Trudeau's story is one of mystery and suspense, for he stalked an insidious killer at the risk of his own life and reputation.

From the dust jacket