Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Osler, William
OSLER, Sir WILLIAM, baronet (1849–1919), regius professor of medicine at Oxford, was born at Bond Head, Ontario, 12 July 1849. He was the sixth son and eighth child of a family of nine, of whom several have attained to distinction. His father, the Rev. Featherston L. Osler, a brother of Edward Osler [q.v.], had emigrated from Cornwall to take up mission work in a then scantily settled district of Canada. His mother's name was Ellen Free Pickton. He was educated at Trinity College School at Weston, and Trinity College, Toronto, with the intention of proceeding to holy orders. However he soon recognized his true vocation and entered upon the study of medicine at the university of Toronto. Two years later (1870) he migrated to McGill University, Montreal, where he completed his medical course and graduated in 1872. In after years he often spoke of three of his teachers who had influenced greatly his outlook and career, and to whose memory he dedicated his text-book of medicine. These were William Arthur Johnson, head master of the Weston school, who first awakened his scientific interests and implanted in him a lifelong devotion to the writings of Sir Thomas Browne; James Bovell, a professor at Trinity College; and Palmer Howard, professor of medicine at McGill.
After two years spent in post-graduate study in England and on the continent of Europe, under some of the most eminent teachers of the day, Osler returned to Montreal in 1874 to take up, at the early age of twenty-five, the professorship of the institutes of medicine at McGill. The ten years during which he held that chair were years of strenuous work. He lectured on physiology and pathology at McGill, and on helminthology at the Veterinary College, was actively engaged in microscopic and pathological research, and made such good use of his opportunities as physician to the Montreal general hospital, that in 1884 he was invited to become professor of medicine in the university of Pennsylvania. The qualities which distinguished Osler in later life were fully manifested in Montreal, as the testimony of his pupils and colleagues shows. Throughout his life he retained a lively affection for his alma mater, McGill; to her he bequeathed his valuable library, and he desired that his ashes should rest within her walls.
The following twenty years were spent in the United States. In Philadelphia he stayed only five years, for when, in 1889, it was decided to appoint a professor of medicine in the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Osler's fame both as teacher and physician was such that the choice naturally fell upon him. He was familiar with the methods of medical teaching and research both in Europe and America, and held very definite views on the way in which a clinic should be conducted. He was given a free hand in the organization of his department and choice of his assistants. Few teachers of medicine have had such an opportunity, and under his direction and guidance there emerged the first organized clinical unit in any Anglo-Saxon country. In it he combined the teaching of small groups at the bedside, and the contact of students and patients, which are the best features of the English schools, with the close co-operation of wards and laboratories under a single director with highly trained assistants, which is the essential feature of the German clinics. He aimed as much at the advancement of medical science as at the instruction of students, and each student was made to feel that he was a fellow-worker with his teachers in the attainment of fresh knowledge. The fifteen years in Baltimore constituted the great period of Osler's life. From Johns Hopkins have gone forth teachers to many of the leading medical schools of North America, and it is not too much to claim that Osler's work there has revolutionized medical education in the United States and in Canada, and has had a profound influence upon the schools in England also.
By frequent trips to Europe Osler kept in touch with the progress of medicine, and with friends and colleagues on this side of the Atlantic. His work was recognized in England by his election to the fellowship of the Royal College of Physicians in 1884, and to the fellowship of the Royal Society in 1898. In 1892 he married Grace, the eldest daughter of John Revere, a Boston manufacturer, and widow of Dr. S. W. Gross, of Philadelphia. Their son, Edward Revere Osler, was born in Baltimore. Another child born to them died in infancy.
As time went on, Osler felt the strain of the strenuous work at Johns Hopkins coupled with that of a large and widespread consulting practice, and when, on the retirement of Sir John Burdon Sanderson in 1904, he was offered the regius professorship of medicine at Oxford, he accepted that appointment. To Osler the atmosphere of Oxford was thoroughly congenial. The traditions of his chair, which carried with it the mastership of the ancient almshouse at Ewelme, appealed to him strongly. He was elected to a studentship at Christ Church, the college of two of his literary favourites, John Locke and Robert Burton, and was an active curator of the Bodleian Library and delegate of the Clarendon Press. In Oxford he found time for the pursuit of literary and antiquarian studies, for which the claims of his clinic and the demands of his medical practice had left little leisure in America. His wide outlook and varied interests enabled him to hold his own in any gathering of learned men, and many to whom his eminence as a physician and teacher of medicine made no strong appeal, welcomed him as a discriminating lover of books, and as a man in full sympathy with the humanities. For several years he was president of the Bibliographical Society, and in 1919, as president of the Classical Association, he delivered a memorable address on ‘The old Humanities and the new Science’. At the same time he maintained his medical activities as head of the Oxford medical school, and as a clinical teacher at the Radcliffe Infirmary. He was a familiar figure in London at the College of Physicians and medical societies. He was one of the founders of the Association of Physicians and of the historical section of the Royal Society of Medicine, and senior editor of the Quarterly Journal of Medicine. At the meeting of the International Medical Congress in London in 1913, he presided over the section of medicine.
Osler's house in Oxford was a centre of wide hospitality, and a place of pilgrimage for numerous visitors from overseas. Many honours came to him. He was created a baronet in 1911. Universities conferred upon him their degrees, and he was an honorary member of many societies. On the day before his seventieth birthday there were presented to him two volumes of essays and papers contributed by pupils and friends on both sides of the Atlantic. The European War brought new claims and fresh activities—for work in military hospitals in Oxford, and in others established in distant places under Canadian and American auspices. When, in 1917, deep sorrow came to him in the loss of his only son, who fell in Flanders, he carried on his work bravely, and with enhanced sympathy for his fellow-sufferers. But the strain told upon him, and in September 1919 he was attacked by the illness to which he succumbed, three months later, on 29 December.
Osler's literary output was very large. His earliest papers dealt with Canadian diatomaceae, the blood-platelets, which he was one of the first to describe, and the filaria which causes the verminous bronchitis of dogs. Others record his work in morbid anatomy, and a long series of clinical papers cover a large part of the field of medicine. These reflect his special interests at the times when they were written, and formed an excellent foundation for his text-book, The Principles and Practice of Medicine, his magnum opus. This book, which first appeared in 1891 and reached a ninth edition in 1920, has been translated into French, German, Spanish, and Chinese. Its clear and individual style, the judicious use made of statistics derived from hospital records, and the stress laid upon morbid anatomy as a foundation of clinical medicine, render it one of the best works of its kind in any language. Amongst other works which call for mention are monographs on Cerebral Palsies in Children (1889), on Chorea and Choreiform Affections (1894), and lectures on Abdominal Tumours (1895) and Angina Pectoris (1897). Many of his writings make a wider appeal, such as the essays and addresses gathered together in the volume entitled Aequanimitas (1904) and An Alabama Student (1908), and lay sermons such as Man's Redemption of Man (1910) and A Way of Life (1913), addressed to students of Edinburgh and Yale. These afford an insight into his thoughts and ideals, and reflect his vivid personality.
Osler's personal magnetism and stimulating influence had no small share in gaining for him his world-wide reputation and the position which he held in the estimation of his contemporaries. A great teacher, he inspired his pupils with his own enthusiasm, and could sum up an important lesson in a terse, epigrammatic phrase. A facile orator, he could make an appropriate speech on any occasion, and his lighter sayings and speeches were permeated by his characteristic humour. Few who knew him failed to come under the spell of his friendship, for he had the gift of being interested in the work and aspirations of all with whom he came in contact. Even the youngest student recognized in Osler a counsellor and a friend. The brotherhood of medicine was his ideal, and no man ever did more to realize that aim.
A portrait of Osler was painted for McGill University in 1903, and another for the university of Pennsylvania in 1905. In the former year (1903) Mr. H. B. Jacobs had a plaque cut by E. Vernon, of Paris, showing Osler in profile. This was reproduced in bronze for distribution among friends, and one of these plaques is in the court of the University Museum at Oxford. The most important portrait is that painted by J. S. Sargent and presented to Johns Hopkins University at Baltimore by Miss M. E. Garrett in 1905. Here Osler is seen in the centre of a group of four professors. Another portrait by an American artist, Mr. Seymour Thomas, was painted in 1908.
[Bulletin of Johns Hopkins Hospital, July 1919; Journal of the Canadian Medical Association, July 1920; Obituary notice in Proceedings of the Royal Society, vol. xcii, B, 1921; M. W. Blogg, Bibliography of Sir William Osler, 1921; Professor Harvey Cushing, The Life of William Osler, 1925; personal knowledge.]