Gladys Rowena Henry was born in
Pawnee City, Nebraska in 1881 and earned her B.S. in zoology from the
University of Nebraska in 1900. She was a member of the
Pi Beta Phi chapter at the University of Nebraska. Because her mother initially objected to Gladys attending medical school, she took graduate classes at Nebraska until 1903, then moved to Baltimore to attend
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Graduating in 1907 with her M.D., she then trained for a year at the
University of Berlin. Dick's years at Johns Hopkins and Berlin "marked her introduction to biomedical research" and provided opportunities to study experimental
cardiac surgery and blood chemistry with
Harvey Cushing,
W.G. MacCallum, and Milton Winternitz. Dick moved to Chicago in 1911 and contracted scarlet fever while working at
Children's Memorial Hospital. After recovering, she took a research position at the
University of Chicago, where she studied kidney pathochemistry with
H. Gideon Wells and the etiology of scarlet fever with her future husband,
George F. Dick. After they married in 1914, Dick served as a pathologist at
Evanston Hospital and later joined her husband at the John R. McCormick Institute for Infectious Diseases. She also served as a bacteriologist for the
United States Public Health Service and worked at
St. Luke's Hospital. and ultimately won a lawsuit against the
Lederle Laboratories in 1930 for "patent infringement and improper toxin manufacture." ==References==