Page:A History of the University of Chicago by Thomas Wakefield Goodspeed.djvu/378

 332 A HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO made. It was at this time that the first intimation, if it was an intimation, was received of what was beginning to take shape in Mr. Rockefeller's mind as to medical research. This came in a letter from Mr. Gates to Secretary Goodspeed regretting that the University had taken action committing itself prematurely in regard to medical work. Mr. Gates professed to be speaking only for himself when he referred to that far higher and better conception, which has been one of the dreams of my own mind at least, of a medical college in this country, conducted by the University of Chicago, magnificently endowed, devoted primarily to investi- gation, making practice itself an incident of investigation, and taking as its students only the choicest spirits, quite irrespective of the question of funds. Against that ideal and possibility a tremendous, if not fatal current, has been turned. This meant that he felt it to be a mistake for the University to connect itself with any existing institution of medicine, and that it should delay entering the medical field until measures could be matured for realizing his "dream." At the first meeting of the Trustees after the reception of Mr. Gates's letter the secretary was instructed to assure Mr. Gates that the affiliation entered into is the ordinary affiliation entered into with other institutions and recorded in the printed terms of affiliation and that the Trustees have not contemplated that the relation shall go further than the ordinary affiliation. The President, however, was so anxious to make a beginning in medical education that when in April, 1901, the trustees of Rush Medical College requested the Trustees of the University to receive the two lower classes of Rush as students of the University, doing the work of these two years in its laboratories, the University Trustees agreed to take this important step if fifty thousand dollars could be secured "with which to provide for initial expenses necessarily connected with such work." For this sum, needed for equipment for the new medical work, application was made to Mr. Rockefeller, who consented that the sum required should be taken from his 1895 subscription. In writing to John D. Rocke- feller, Jr., Mr. MacLeish, the vice-president of the Board, said that the President estimated that in taking the step proposed the annual expenses would be increased by the sum of forty-four