% 2 pathology, histology, chemistry and anatomy occupied succes- 

 sive floors. Less tangible but vastly more significant were some 

 other details. The lecture building housed an ambulatory 

 clinic; and students passed quickly from talks about disease 

 to the sight of it. Yet more important was a connection direct, 

 with the bedridden of the Presbyterian hospital. A second more 

 indirect was with the sick or dead who lay kitty-corner across 

 the street. Here stood the Cook county hospital of which the 

 half of the attending staff had been, since time began, the men 

 of Rush. 



When Wherry entered the school the requirement for 

 graduation in medicine had just been lifted to four years. 

 Admittance to Rush, however, was still to any possessed of 

 high school knowledge only. Here the father's ambition was 

 technically disappointed, though, as we shall see, not too 

 heavily. Rush was still a spring from which clear waters 

 flowed. At the turn of the century it assuaged the thirst of a 

 student body of more than a thousand not counting several 

 hundred "practitioners" who via five-dollar visitors' cards 

 gave themselves postgraduate clinical instruction. Teaching 

 the lot was a faculty numbering four hundred. Neither group 

 lends itself to quick description. Among the students were 

 Syrians, Armenians and a Turk; several Blacks, Nipponese and 

 a Chinaman; Canadians were common and South Americans 

 appeared as stragglers. Every state of the Union could answer, 

 here. The vast majority were the sons of ministers, school 

 teachers, farmers or fresh-water college professors of one sort 

 or another; and they came from the country, expecting to 

 return there. The faculty was equally cosmopolitan in com- 

 plexion, a third of it, if not foreign born, of foreign parentage 

 and speaking the American language with foreign intonation. 

 Thus, even though not yet so scheduled, the atmosphere about 

 Rush was distinctly of "university" type, for here met men 

 of widely differing mind, language and philosophy brought 

 together by a common purpose — that of being of service to 

 mankind. It produced a human alloy at once resistant and 

 malleable. 



If the school had a policy, it was the production of capable 

 doctors — men able to meet a medical situation, whatever its 

 nature, wherever found. This had been the tradition of Rush 



