in Harvard. Forty-one at the time, Wherry knew him as the ^Q 

 man who at twenty-seven was the first to prove the transmis- 

 sion of a disease (Texas fever) by an insect carrier. In a later 

 decade he had insisted upon the difference between human and 

 other strains of the tubercle bacillus and then described the 

 sudden death consequent at times in diphtheria upon a second 

 injection of "antitoxine," correctly ascribing the disaster to a 

 "sensitization" of the patient by the first injection of foreign 

 protein (horse serum) . (The "Theobald Smith reaction" con- 

 stitutes the opening paragraph of that long chapter in "immu- 

 nology" headed "anaphylaxis.") Under this master Wherry 

 broadened greatly his philosophy of biology and parasitism, of 

 action and reaction, of life and death. What he learned he 

 added to what he had received from Hektoen, and many of the 

 teaching hours toward which Wherry was heading were to 

 be made glorious for the students by his recitation of what 

 he knew of the accomplishments and the thoughts of these 

 men. 



Upon his return to Chicago for his senior year in medicine, 

 Wherry reentered Hektoen's laboratory. His bacteriological 

 findings in the instance of an acute death again reached the 

 floor of the Pathological society, were printed [2] and repub- 

 lished in extenso a year later [ 3 ] . They concerned carbuncle. 

 A barber had developed a pimple on his upper lip, gone feverish, 

 and to the hospital. Twenty- four hours later he had died, with 

 Hektoen making an autopsy. Clinically there had been the 

 signs of a septico-pyemia with dead-house findings confirming 

 the fact. Wherry had isolated a pure culture of the staphylo- 

 coccus aureus not only from the lip but from all the internally 

 situated organs. 



By title, and superficially viewed, these second and third 

 papers covered a case report. Usually such are mere numbers 

 added to medicine's curio catalogue. In Wherry's contribution, 

 however, there was something more. It evidenced, first, what 

 was to prove his way of work and thought. His subject was 

 just a slice from any day's routine — but, as the future was to 

 prove, it was always out of the commonplace that he was to 

 extract his rounded pearls. Second, he was presenting a bac- 

 teriological account; but it was preceded by a clinical and an 

 anatomical report which clearly exhibited his expertness in all 



