34 



It could be said with truth that Rush's educational program 

 was not yet in rigor mortis. There was still free movement 

 between the departmental joints; and the students had so 

 many open hours that the newly added fourth year could 

 not be filled with "requirements" except as much of a third 

 was repeated. Each, therefore, still had ruminant periods 

 left; and those who chose could, by judicious "cutting," in- 

 crease them indefinitely. To skip one instructor's classes for 

 those of another was just good sense — the registrar did not 

 care and it was up to the students to decide from whom they 

 might learn most. How they employed their "leisure" was, 

 of course, something different with different men. Some just 

 loafed; others engaged in extra-curricular, money-yielding 

 jobs; to the few, here was opportunity for self -assignment. 

 The astute sought out the men of better capacity to teach; the 

 still more astute apprenticed themselves to division heads most 

 capable of pointing a way through the jungle of that day's 

 medical thought. To this group belonged Wherry. As college 

 man he had come with a record that was unusual. Francis 

 Bacon, Thomas Browne and John Bunyan were not mere 

 names. The English ballads he had diluted with the poetry of 

 the East. But, as his hidden history showed, he possessed more. 

 It was this that again made him stand out. He could draw, he 

 could observe on his own, he had quantitative judgment, and 

 he could come to conclusions other than those of the printed 

 page. 



Wherry stepped through the paces required to make him 

 an M D quickly and easily. He did not however top his class 

 as he had written his father was his intention. He had learned 

 better; and so had become more than good catch basin of the 

 temporarily acceptable facts of medicine presented by section 

 masters. 



NOT long after his entrance into Rush (it was in his second 

 year, to be specific) , Wherry knocked, to gain admit- 

 tance to its laboratory of pathology, presided over by Ludvig 

 Hektoen, professor. Born of Norwegian parents in Wisconsin 

 and a graduate of Luther college, Hektoen was now just 

 thirty-five. Nevertheless he was commonly referred to as "the 



