The Chimp and the River is a narration of journalist David Quammen’s search for answers and scientific proof of HIV first occurrence in 1908. He traveled to many places, collecting information on the first existence of HIV, information on scientific data that found patient zero, the first patient that had this pandemic virus. His journey explains how a couple of doctors in laboratory in a war-ridden city, Kinshasa sustained routine biopsy procedures. The procedures where done by collecting tissue from patients, either dead or very sick and preserving it in paraffin (wax). These preservatives where kept in the back shelves of an underfunded pathology laboratory at the University of Kinshasa. Not until decades later did they fall into the hands
