An anti-heroic history of East Coast fever might go something like this: in 1901 East Coast fever invaded Rhodesia. Well-trained veterinarians failed to recognize that it was a new disease. That failure did not really matter because before anyone could have identified it as being new, the disease had entrenched itself so thoroughly that it was eradicated only after fifty years of intensive work. Robert Koch did recognize that the disease was new, and Charles Lounsbury and Arnold Theiler did identify the tick that transmits the parasite, and did characterize the parasite. None of that mattered very much, because, without a treatment or a vaccine, the fifty years devoted to controlling the disease had to rely largely on long-established techniques such as quarantine, fencing and slaughter of infected animals. Since the search for an expert was badly handled, Koch missed a whole season in which to study the disease, but that did not really matter, because Arnold Theiler and Charles Lounsbury were already at work. Koch might have reached Rhodesia sooner than he did and identified the disease as being new sooner than he did, but that did not matter because the disease had become entrenched long before any expert was invited and because Lounsbury, Theiler and Hutcheon were becoming increasingly convinced that the disease was a new one. Bruce might have been a better choice than Koch but even Bruce could not have discovered a cure or a vaccine or reversed the spread of the disease.