"Had these drugs not existed, the drug companies would have jumped on our findings," he added.

Then, too, the fresh thinking was coming from what many doctors regarded as a medical outpost, Perth.

All the factors created a type of rigidity that many doctors say still exists for better or worse.

Further, Dr. Marshall said, "The fact that the big drug companies who were supporting the journal articles ignored H. pylori was far more effective than actually saying that a bacterial cause was not true because if they had said it was false, or not important, they would have created a controversy and maybe media interest."

Right from the moment in 1979 when Dr. Warren, a pathologist, first saw bacteria in stomach biopsies at the Royal Perth Hospital, he said: "I met skepticism from my colleagues who mostly did not want to know, or believe, what I was describing. Anyone could see the bacteria through a microscope, but the clinicians did not want to see them."

Why was he the only one seeing the bacteria? Why had others not described them earlier? He did not know, Dr. Warren said in answer to the skeptics who asked. "Once I started looking for them, they were obvious," he said, "but convincing other people was another matter."

Even doctors who peered down the barrel of a microscope and did agree bacteria were present said they must be opportunists, not the cause of stomach ailments.

Dr. Warren pointed out that the bacteria were all the same, not the variety that would be expected of secondary invaders. But, he said, "It was hard for me to prove them wrong."

Proof took years.

Early support came from Dr. Marshall's efforts in the library and laboratory. Aided by a librarian in Perth, Dr. Marshall painstakingly searched for papers published decades earlier than those listed in the United States National Library of Medicine's electronic data base that starts about 1965.