Wide Road Ahead: The Story of a Woman Bacteriologist

This book is a slight thing which is either autobiographical, as suggested in the dust cover blurb, which says that the author "herself has lived through all the experiences she describes," or fictitious, as indicated in a note facing chapter I, which says "All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to a living person is a coincidence." It is a story of a young woman bacteriologist who overcomes in Horatio Alger best success story fashion the handicaps of her youth, her sex, the skepticism of ranchers who cannot visualize a female "bug doctor," the limitations of official red tape and numerous other obstacles. She starts out with a passionate devotion to bacteriology and performs many wonderful feats, including the teaching of doctors to abandon their old fashioned methods and use pneumonia typing and serum therapy. In the process of overcoming baseless prejudice against her youth and sex she