- Historic Sites Dr. Campbell’s Remarkable Experiment June/july
1982 | Volume 33, Issue 4 Quitting his medical practice for a
time, he set up camp in the hill country outside San Antonio to
study the interiors of two neighboring caves. They were nearly
identical, but while one housed a large colony of bats, the
other had none. A close comparative study, Campbell believed,
would help him pinpoint the exact conditions necessary to lure
bats to a tower. The work was arduous and thoroughly unpleasant:
Campbell spent long hours cramped in observation, trudging
through guano, choking on potent ammoniac gases in a fine rain
of urine, while grotesque cave beetles and bats swarmed over
him. But in the end Campbell was convinced he knew the decisive
architectural features. Returning jubilantly to San Antonio, he
immediately secured a twentyfive-year lease on an acre of land
near Mitchell’s Lake, a site selected for its ample endowment of
malarial mosquitoes. Here his bat tower would have an exacting
test. Into Mitchell