128 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY OF April, 



The influence of such a remarkable group of America's greatest 

 Tnedical teachers undoubtedly molded the mind destined to chart 

 so original a course along new public health lines later in life. 



Graduating with honor in 1886 at the age of thirty-five years, 

 the doctorate degree was given to a man broken in health, and in 

 the early stage of what proved to be mild enteric fever. By special 

 arrangement his final medical examinations were given prior to his 

 sailing for Europe, the prostrating illness not being definitely 

 diagnosed until Queenstown was reached. Here under the care 

 of Dr. W. L. Townsend, in consultation with the celebrated Sir 

 X/auder Brunton, and later joined by the master in therapeutics, the 

 brilliant Dr. Horatio C. Wood, Dr. Dixon won the battle against 

 ivhat his physicians thought would be a fatal illness. Those of 

 us who have been closely associated with Dr. Dixon's work in 

 sanitary science have always felt that the influences of the kindly 

 and helpful Townsend and the stimulation of the brilliant thera- 

 peutist Wood, together with the association and life friendship of 

 the learned Sir Lauder Brunton, influenced the young medical mind 

 to study the then infant branch of hygiene — a branch of medicine at 

 that time receiving its greatest impetus on the continent of Europe, 

 particularly in Germany, 



After a prolonged holiday in Europe and complete restoration 

 to health, Dr. Dixon returned to Philadelphia in 1888 and was 

 made Professor of Hygiene in the Medical and Scientific Depart- 

 ments of the University of Pennsylvania, and later in the same 

 medical school year was appointed Dean of the Auxiliary Depart- 

 ment of MecUcine. Dr. Dixon, while holding this Chair, established 

 the first laboratory of hygiene in the University of Pennsylvania 

 and one of the first on the American continent. 



In 1889, several months' study in Europe, undertaken with a 

 resolution to perfect himself to teach the science of bacteriology, 

 brought him under the tutorship of Cruikshank, the celebrated bacte- 

 riologist in King's College, London, and gave opportunity for taking 

 a special course in bacteriology under Professor Klein of the College 

 of State Medicine in London. It was while a student under Klein 

 that Dixon made a notable observation, one by which he will perhaps 

 he best remembered as a scientific investigator. 



As he sat on his stool in Klein's laboratory, looldng through 

 the microscope and carefully searching a well stained slide prepara- 

 tion made from a culture of tubercle bacilli, he made the observation 

 that certain of these organisms were club shaped and others appar- 



