After recovering from a second bout of tuberculosis, von Speyr studied nursing for several months at l'Hôpital Saint-Loup near Pompaples, but left dissatisfied. She eventually moved with her family to Basel in summer 1921 to finish her secondary studies. Although her mother tried to arrange a job and a husband for her, Adrienne resolved instead to enter medical school at the University of Basel, which created a rift between them. She studied in the Faculty of Medicine between 1923 and 1926, working as a tutor to pay her tuition. She was a pupil of Gerhard Hotz and became a friend of fellow medical students Adolf Portmann, a zoologist, and Franz Merke, a surgeon. She was inspired by the dedication of several doctors and nurses, and shocked by what she perceived as the cowardice or egotism of others. These experiences would later shape her views on the medical practice, particularly her beliefs in the physician's responsibility for his patients, in the medical profession as self-giving service, in the treatment of the whole person, and in the call to accompany terminally ill patients to the end. In a short biography of von Speyr, von Balthasar lists some of the decisive features of her time in medical school:omplete contentment when she could finally work with the sick, when she could make silent rounds at night in the wards in order to comfort, to help, to prepare the dying for death; her indignation when patients used in demonstrations in the lecture halls or unwed mothers in the delivery room were not treated with respect for their human dignity; her anger when a doctor, responsible for the death of a patient, put the blame on one of the nurses (Adrienne saw to it that his lectures were boycotted by the entire student body until the doctor had to give up his professorship in Basel); her admiration at the silent asceticism of a large number of the nurses."In these and many other experiences," he adds, "Adrienne learned to seek the God whom she had not yet succeeded in truly finding by the way of service to neighbor."