This husband-and-wife team made major contributions to our knowledge of scarlet fever and later found themselves at the center of an international controversy over alleged commercialization of medical advances.

Born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where his father was a railroad engineer, George Dick studied at Rush Medical College in Chicago. Graduating in 1905, he spent two years treating iron mine workers in Buhl, Montana, after which he studied pathology in Vienna and Munich. In 1909 he joined the faculty at the University of Chicago, also practicing medicine at several Chicago hospitals.

Dick met Gladys Henry in 1911, when both were working as University of Chicago research pathologists. Henry had been born in Pawnee City, Nebraska. Her father was a seller of grain, and a former Civil War cavalry soldier who raised carriage horses. After studying science at the University of Nebraska, Henry went to Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in...