David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants

Freireich took the train from Chicago
to Champaign-Urbana, where the
University of Illinois was located. He
rented a bedroom in a rooming house.
He got a job waiting tables in a sorority
house to pay his tuition, with the added
bonus that he could feed himself from the
leftovers. He did well and was accepted
to medical school, after which he began
his internship at Cook County Hospital,
the major public hospital in Chicago.
Medicine in those years was a genteel
profession. Doctors held a privileged
social position and typically came from
upper-middle-class backgrounds.
Freireich was not like that. Even today,
in his eighties, Freireich is an