marooned in the tropics; and the battle of his soul between the 2^9 

 easy existence offered him there and the call to duty out of 

 the home country. (Wherry was by lineal descent a Scotch 

 Presbyterian.) The other (1930) was inspired of the kid- 

 napings that governmental impotence was toying with. 

 Wherry had caught his man. The item at issue was proper 

 punishment. What more just than banishment to Rat island 

 off South America, where the rodents swarmed over him to 

 leave but the calcium of his bones! 



In the summer of 1923 I had accompanied one of the 

 members of this catorce (Cincinnati's great painter, John E 

 Weis) into our Southwest. There Wherry wrote me (June 

 30,1923): 



I hope you are enjoying yourself in the riot of colors. I inclose 

 clippings about the college which came as a surprise this A M. 

 As you know, Blackfan has gone to Harvard & is taking 

 McKhann with him. I presume Higgins will leave us next. 



The clippings referred to an affiliation that had been con- 

 summated between Cincinnati's oldest dental school and the 

 university. (It lasted only three years when the dental school 

 closed.) Another was editorial on "Drifting at the medical 

 college" in Charles P Taft's (chief among the donors to 

 everything in Cincinnati's university) Times-Star. Why 

 was Blackfan leaving? Why was Heuer (head of surgery) 

 unhappy? Why was there "opposition to a progressive 

 policy?" Holmes, who had resuscitated the great enterprise, 

 was not dead three years and yet something was "standing 

 between Cincinnati and the development of a great medical 

 college here." 



Wherry followed a week later with: 



I'm worried about your patient Harkness [an instance of 

 pseudo-leukemia that had been x-rayed]. Of course you 

 hardened devils of general practitioners would lose no sleep 

 over such a little thing as I am going to recount to you. But 

 when you run off and leave a laboratory recluse the responsi- 

 bility of caring for such a lovely fellow, it scratches through 

 the surface of his uncalcimined soul when something goes 

 wrong. For the past three days he has been feeling weaker 

 and weaker. Now he walks with a staggering, spastic gait; 



