Sir William Osler
1849-1919
Canadian Physician and Professor of Medicine
Canadian William Osler influenced the establishment of medical education in Canada, the United States, and Great Britain. An outstanding clinician, he sought to lead physicians away from textbooks and to the bedsides of patients. He also foresaw the rise of medical specialists, a trend that did not take root until the end of the nineteenth century when improved travel allowed patients to more conveniently reach a specialist.
Born July 12, 1849, in Bond Head, Canada, Osler was the youngest of nine children of an Anglican missionary. He considered becoming a priest but decided upon medicine, receiving his doctor of medicine at McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, in 1872. He was recognized early in his career for his investigations of blood corpuscles and platelets, the cells responsible for blood clotting. He continued his education in London, Berlin, and Vienna, and returned to Canada as a general practitioner in Dondas and lecturer at McGill. His great interest was pathology, and he spent much time in the postmortem laboratory. However, he always emphasized that physicians should get to know the patients themselves. He constantly repeated that it is more important to know what sort of patient has the disease than to know what sort of disease the patient has. At that time Western physicians were moving toward depersonalization, placing greater focus on the afflictions—lesions and diseases—of the body rather then the person.
In 1884 Osler accepted a position at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. There he was given carte blanche to develop a curriculum in clinical medicine. In Philadelphia he helped organize the Association of American Physicians. In 1888 Osler was invited and accepted an invitation to become the first professor of medicine at the new Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. There he was instrumental in developing the curriculum and clinical program that made that institution one of the most famous medical schools in the world. Students were encouraged to study their patients in the wards and laboratory, and then to present their findings to a head doctor and to other students. This pattern of help and consultation spread to other medical schools. During the first few years, while there were still no students, Osler wrote his famous text, The Principles and Practice of Medicine (1892), which encouraged medical students to go into clinical medicine.
In 1897 Frederick T. Gates (1853-1929), a newly appointed director of a philanthropic foundation, read the textbook and used the principles as a basis for the establishment of the Rockefeller Institute of Medical Research in New York.
While visiting Oxford in 1904, Osler was appointed Regius Professor of Medicine, an honor reserved for British citizens; Osler qualified through his Canadian citizenship. There Osler used his time to teach, lecture, and write prolifically. He was honored by receiving the baronet title, becoming Sir William Osler.
Osler was an energetic man with a dynamic and magnetic personality. His goal was to develop the human and caring side of medicine. He married Grace Goss, widow of a colleague in Philadelphia, and great-granddaughter of Paul Revere. When their one son, Revere, was killed in World War I, Osler became very depressed and lost his spirit. Osler died December 29, 1919, in Oxford, of pneumonia. His outstanding library as well as his personal books and papers were given to McGill University.
Medical terminology has immortalized Osler in the following terms: Osler's nodes, red and tender swellings on the hands related to heart problems; Osler-Vaquez disease, a build up of red blood cells or polycythemia; Osler's maneuver, a way of compressing the radialartery; Osler-Rendu-Weber disease, a hereditary disorder marked by nosebleeds.
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