The Days of a Man 1:1875 



Doctor 1875, I received the (scarcely earned) degree of 

 {. ,. . Doctor of Medicine, though it had not at all been 



Medicine . 



my intention to enter that profession. A certain 

 amount of medical knowledge, I thought, would 

 enable me to teach Physiology better. As a matter 

 of fact, the next year I gave a course of lectures on 

 Comparative Anatomy in the college itself. 



At about the same time, one of my special friends, 

 Wiley Harvey W. Wiley, since noted as the apostle of pure 

 foods and rational sanitation, won his medical degree 

 from the same institution for purposes similar to 

 mine. Wiley, by the way, had preceded me, though 

 not immediately, both in the High School and in the 

 Northwestern Christian University, and he recently 

 recalled to my mind the fact that he was instrumental 

 in my going to Indianapolis. It seems that one of 

 his former professors at Harvard (probably Shaler) 

 had written to him about "a young man named 

 Jordan, said by Agassiz to be his most promising 

 student in Natural History." Consequently when 

 a member of the local school board asked him (Wiley) 

 to suggest a suitable science teacher for the High 

 School, he mentioned me; and Superintendent 

 Brown at once got off the telegram which arrived 

 so opportunely at Cambridge. 1 



Wiley is a man of independent character and rare 

 wit, so that to meet him is to encounter a rush of 

 fresh air, though by some freak of heredity he looks 

 like a conventional, well-nourished bishop. Once 

 presenting himself in silk hat and frock coat at the 



1 The rest of the story (which has already appeared in print) I relate with 

 diffidence and only because Wiley himself appears to set much store by it. 

 Being once asked to mention his greatest discovery in science, referring to Sir 

 Humphry Davy's "discovery of Michael Faraday" my over-enthusiastic 

 sponsor replied, "David Starr Jordan." 



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