[4] A multitalented athlete, Wood earned a total of ten varsity letters at Harvard: three each in football, hockey, and baseball, plus one in tennis.
In one noted game, Harvard came back from a 13-0 deficit to beat Army 14-13 as Wood led two touchdown drives, and made two crucial defensive plays (a touchdown-saving tackle and an interception) to save the win.
[1] Booth, suffering from a leg injury, did not start and had a second-quarter field goal attempt blocked, although he did later throw a touchdown pass for Yale's only points; Booth also nearly took a second-half kickoff return 96 yards for the potential winning score, before Harvard's Hall of Fame center Ben Ticknor managed to tackle him from behind by grabbing his sweater.
[1] Wood was president of the student council, elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and graduated summa cum laude.
[13] Wood was also a leader off the field, praised as a model student-athlete by celebrated writers of the day such as Westbrook Pegler and Damon Runyon.
[4] To earn money for medical school,[7] he wrote a book entitled What Price Football – A Player's Defense of the Game.
[2][4] In 1942, at the age of 32, he became head of the Department of Medicine at Washington University in St. Louis[15] and physician-in-charge at Barnes Hospital.
[2] He remained in St. Louis for 13 years, then returned to Hopkins in 1955 as vice president of the university and hospital, and as a professor of microbiology.
[2] Beginning in his undergraduate days, Wood had developed an interest in the role of leukocytes that continued through his career.
[4] He received a Distinguished Achievement Award from Modern Medicine and a posthumous Kober Medal from the Association of American Physicians.