Opening paragraphs...................

     On September 12, 1876, the crowd overflowing the
auditorium of Baltimore's Academy of Music was in a mood
of hopeful excitement, but excitement without frivolity. 
Indeed, despite an unusual number of women in attendance,
many of them from the uppermost reaches of local society, a
reporter noted, "There was no display of dress or fashion." 
For this occasion had serious purpose.  It was to mark the
launching of the Johns Hopkins University, an institution
whose leaders intended not simply to found a new university
but to change all of American education; indeed, they sought
considerably more than that.  They planned to change the
way in which Americans tried to understand and grapple
with nature.  The keystone speaker, the English scientist
Thomas H. Huxley, personified their goals.

John M. Barry,  The Great Influenza