[1] In the beginning, Dragstedt thought of becoming a physicist after hearing lectures by Robert Andrews Millikan but was later influenced by physicians Ivan Pavlov and Michel Latarjet.

Dragstedt became a talented operating surgeon after practicing with animals and was attracted to surgery but he felt physiology had "greater promise for innovative accomplishments".

[10] In 1925, as a Rockefeller Fellow, Dragstedt traveled abroad where his daughter Charlotte was born; his travels included to Paris to study at Fritz de Quervain's clinic and Vienna with Anton Eiselsberg and at Vienna General Hospital with Jakob Erdheim and finally to Budapest with Eugen Pólya and at St. Rochus Hospital with Hümer Hültl.

He paid each teacher $150 a month and returned to the United States[1] where he was recruited in 1926 by Dallas B. Phemister to help design new research facilities for University of Chicago.

[13] In a 1971 letter, Dragstedt spoke of his time in the military, saying he went to Washington, D. C. after leaving Iowa to study typhoid vaccines at Army Medical School with Edward Bright Vedder.

After growing tired of his activities, he transferred to Fort Leavenworth and subsequently to Yale with Milton Winternitz and then Camp Merritt which he called "my best experience in the Army" as he would perform autopsies from morning to night for about eight months.

[1] In 1936, he was one of three doctors from the University of Chicago's Department of Bacteriology, Surgery and Medicine who discovered a new germ, the apparent cause of ulcerative colitis.

In a 1971 news interview, he revealed that he always believed "knowledge was the most important legacy one generation could bequeath to the next", and when he once asked his classmates how long Earth would remain inhabitable and they responded two billion years, he chose teaching as his profession.