2^8 but two "head" professors, it dared, nevertheless to hack at 

 the oak stiffening as "progress" in Cincinnati's medical edu- 

 cation. If the sclerosing process could not be checked, the 

 whole thing might be chopped down, it said; and life begun 

 anew with a sapling. The subscribers could still laugh. 

 Before long its meetings were known as those of a "Black 

 faculty" (so named of O V Batson, shortly to become the 

 professor of research anatomy in Pennsylvania's Jefferson 

 college) . 



By 1924, evening sessions were being called. Some fourteen 

 got together to talk about all manner of things and to do as 

 they pleased about some others. No organization, no constitu- 

 tion, no president, no program, no dues ever interfered with 

 "business;" no name even. Baehr once called it "the Philo- 

 sophic-literary-artistic, etc" society. Meeting at each other's 

 houses, black bread, cheese and undenatured beer had usually 

 been discovered by the temporarily active host. With time, 

 some of the earlier members departed, to be replaced by a 

 homeopath, two dentists, a painter, an architect and an actu- 

 ary. At one time a dean of the college (AC Bachmeyer) was 

 a member; and throughout, the assistant dean and faculty 

 secretary (Frank B Cross) . Other names to rise to fame were 

 Shiro Tashiro (nerve conduction is associated with a burning 

 process) , Robert A Kehoe (authority in heavy metal poison- 

 ing), Gustav Eckstein (to read to this crowd first, the lives 

 of his laboratory animals). All the men "did" something — 

 the professionals because they were professional, the rest 

 because they had ardor. Thus they crafted, sculpted, painted 

 or wrote — by hiding Pegasus. Powerless specifically in any of 

 Cincinnati's affairs, all could do something to the machinery — 

 they frequently dropped tools into the running parts. 



Wherry was qualified member under several designations. 

 His love of the crowd came to expression in many a letter. 

 To the pretty things he had so often done to illustrate his 

 scientific articles, he added, for this group, some landscapes; 

 and to his scientific essays, "stories." These tales should have 

 been printed. Unhappily he kept the originals in a lower 

 drawer of his hospital desk — and search after his death 

 revealed that he had destroyed them. The themes of two are 

 repeated. In one he portrayed the struggle of a Scotchman 



