“Though the surgeon [William Coley] did not invent fever therapy, he was the first to do it systematically. After some of the first people he tested it on died from the infection, he started to use heat-sterilised bacterial extracts, with good results. From 1895 until his death in 1936, Coley and his contemporaries treated hundreds of people with cancer by injecting them with pathogenic extracts. The starting dose was small and increased over subsequent shots until the patients developed a fever above 39 °C. Though there were failures, he achieved many cures and the technique came to be known as ‘Coley’s toxins’.”