Travel back to the 1960s and walk the halls of Chicago's Cook County Hospital with Douglas R. Gracey, a medical intern eager to learn the ways of medicine, help patients and impress his colleagues.

Back then, medical education was different. Diagnosis was not so certain, treatment options were severely limited and patients, for the most part, expected less from their doctors.

The patients at Cook County Hospital had to deal with poverty, racial discrimination and social stigma in addition to the symptoms caused by their diseases. The county system was the only realistic option for...