1875] Harvey W^. Wiley 



door of Girard College, Philadelphia, where, through 

 a whim of its founder, Stephen Girard, no clerical 

 is ever to enter, he was at first repulsed. "We 

 don't allow any clergyman here," said the warden. 

 "The hell you don't," replied Wiley, and was there- Not a 

 upon promptly admitted. dencal 



From Indianapolis he went as professor of Chemis- 

 try to the newly established Purdue University 

 the State Agricultural College of Indiana at 

 Lafayette, where he was an active spirit both inside 

 and outside the institution. Once the president, a 

 prim and fussy personage, haled him before the 

 board of trustees on three charges: (a) he failed to 

 attend morning prayer; (b) he rode a "cartwheel" 

 (bicycle) in a "grotesque costume" (knickerbockers); 

 and (c) he played baseball! The further complaint 

 that he belonged to a political (Republican) club 

 was, however, not pressed. But the same official 

 having made a futile attack on college fraternities, 

 Sigma Chi, then politically powerful in Indiana, vir- 

 tually compelled his resignation from the presidency. 



When Wiley and I were made physicians in name, Concem- 

 medical science was still in the medieval period, '"* 



, i i i r i medicine 



almost nothing being known of what constitutes 

 modern medicine. The existence of microscopic 

 organisms in connection with disease was but dimly 

 recognized, and the natural history of these creatures 

 not understood. The word "bacteriology" still 

 slumbered in the Greek lexicon, its component parts 

 widely separated. Moreover, the science of pharma- 

 cology had yet to be developed, the effect of medicine 

 on the human organism being then mainly a matter 

 of experience and guesswork. Antiseptic surgery 

 was an unknown art; when a surgeon cut into the 



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