1897-1902 



II 



THE summer of 1 897 marked Wherry a new and different 

 kind of salesman — this time it was men's suits at Brown- 

 ing King and Company. The problem of their design never 

 made great imprint upon him; but the quality of their wool- 

 ens, yes. Financial background at home had not changed, but 

 between what it could calculate and he had saved, entrance 

 into Rush medical college was deemed possible. 



In 1897, though situated in Chicago (the "plague spot for 

 medical education of the United States") , Rush was a ranking 

 school. Like the majority of western colleges, it, too, had 

 started as a "private" enterprise but, early conscious of the 

 weakness of such status, had "affiliated" itself with Lake Forest 

 university. At the moment, this first university connection 

 was being shifted to a similar tie-up with Chicago. (Gold 

 letters announcing the event were painted into the panelled 

 windows over the entrance to the college at Christmas.) 



Rush towered from the middle of Chicago's medical Quar- 

 tier latin — with the substrate and the possibility for great 

 education therein exactly those which the imagination of a 

 world has always associated with the French. Here art and 

 arson, abject poverty and riches, priests and panderers were 

 next door neighbors; filth and hygiene kissed in the alleys; 

 Chicago's intellectual and social cream warmed their feet in 

 the same hay that strewed the floors of the street cars in which 

 the dregs from the glue factory rode. Men who saw medicine 

 as a discipline that involved all society could ask for nothing 

 more. From Rush, the observant might see everything. 



The school commanded two brick buildings. The first of 

 these, minareted and a glowing example of bastard-gothic, 

 had risen on the northeast corner of Harrison and Wood streets 

 after Chicago's fire; the second (celebrative of Chicago's 

 World's fair of '93 ) , lay across the street, and, flatter of front, 

 housed the "laboratories" of the college. Chief content of the 

 former were two great amphitheatres; while in the latter, 



