Haskell County, Kansas, lay three hundred miles to the west of Funston. There the smell of manure meant civilization. People raised grains, poultry, cattle, and hogs. Sod-houses were so common that even one of the county's few post offices was located in a dug-out sod home. In 1918 the population was just 1,720, spread over 578 square miles. But primitive and raw as life could be there, science had penetrated the county in the form of Dr. Loring Miner. Enamored of ancient Greece -he periodically reread the classics in Greek -he epitomized William Welch's comment that "the results [of medical education] were better than the system." His son was also a doctor, trained in fully scientific ways, serving in the Navy in Boston.