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William Bean's career at the Cincinnati General Hospital was developed in association with a flock of excellent clinicians, under the aegis of Marion Blankenhom, then the chairman of the Department of Medicine. Bill, who was the scion of one of the first families of Virginia, had become accustomed to medicine's rough and tumble at the Boston City Hospital. Politics permeated the atmosphere of this great institution in a city dominated by its mayor, James M. Curley. One of the mayor's pet projects was this hospital, which after his reign seemed to fall into adversity.

But Bill hardly could be said to have known politics until he swung into the orbit of a Texas protégé of John Nance Garner and Sam Rayburn who was then in charge of the Nutrition Clinic. Whether Bill had to scale this Everest because it was there or because of an innate nutritional urge, I wouldn't