This was the proper way to produce results: first persuade Dr.Buttrick, then induce him to persuade Dr.Gates, who, if convinced, had ready access to the great treasure house.

But Dr.Gates also began to smile; even the combined eloquence of Page and Dr.Buttrick could not move him.

So the reform marked time until one day Dr.Buttrick, Dr.Gates, and Dr.Simon Flexner, the Director of the Rockefeller institute, happened to be fellow travellers--again on a Pullman car.
"Dr.Flexner," said Dr.Buttrick--this for the benefit of his incredulous friend--"what is the scientific standing of Dr.Charles W.
Stiles ?" "Very, very high," came the immediate response, and at this Dr.Gates pricked up his ears.

Yet the subsequent conversation disclosed that Dr.
Flexner was unfamiliar with the Stiles hookworm work.

He, too, smiled at the idea, but, like Page his smile was not one of ridicule.
"If Dr.Stiles believes this," was his dictum, "it is something to be taken most seriously." As Dr.Flexner is probably the leading medical scientist in the United States, his judgment at once lifted the hookworm issue to a new plane.
Dr.Gates ceased laughing and events now moved rapidly.