The Life Of Sir William Osler

In his time the most famous physician in the world, Canadian-born William Osler (1849-1919) is still the best-known figure in the history of medicine. This new, definitive biography by Michael Bliss is the first full-scale life of Osler to appear since 1925. An award-winning medical historian, Bliss draws on many untapped sources to recreate Osler's life and medical times for a new generation of readers. Born at Bond Head, north of Toronto, Osler rose from obscurity to become the greatest medical teacher and writer in three countries. At Canada's McGill University, America's Johns Hopkins University, and finally as regius professor at Oxford, Osler was idolized by two generations of medical students and practitioners, for whom he came to personify the ideal doctor. His quest was to bring high standards and scientific methods into general practice in the medical world and to give teaching hospitals a solid place in the education of doctors. The publication of his book, The Principles and Practice of Medicine (1892), established him as the authority of modern medicine, a position he held well into the new century. Osler was revered as the high priest of the advent of twentieth-century medicine. In this fine biography, Michael Bliss animates the epic quality of Osler's life - not only in telling his personal story, but in setting that story against the dramatic backdrop of the coming of modern medicine. Winner of the Jason A. Hannah Medal, awarded by the Royal Society of Canada and the Hannah Institute for the History of Medicine

Sir William Osler (1849 – 1919) was a Canadian physician, one of the founding professors of Johns Hopkins Hospital, and the "Father of Modern Medicine". In this, his famous address to his students, he sets out his philosophy of life. "My message is but a word, a Way, an easy expression of the experience of a plain man whose life has never been worried by any philosophy higher than that of the shepherd in As You Like It. I wish to point out a path in which the wayfaring man, though a fool, cannot err; not a system to be worked out painfully only to be discarded, not a formal scheme, simply a habit as easy—or as hard! —to adopt as any other habit, good or bad."

William Osler (1849-1919) is widely regarded as one of the most influential physicians of the late 19th and early 20th century and a key figure in the history of medicine. Besides his research activities and his dedicated scientific work, Osler’s greatest contribution to the medical world has been the system of residency which he developed at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, thus introducing a new and deeply humanistic approach to the strictly scientific realm of traditional medicine. Harvey Cushing (1869-1939), a former student and close friend of Osler’s and a pioneer of neurosurgery, has himself become an icon of modern medicine. He was one of the first physicians to use X-rays for diagnosing brain tumours and he developed revolutionary methods of blood pressure measurement. He also discovered Cushing’s syndrome, the first autoimmune disease identified in a human being. This monumental biography earned him the Pulitzer Prize in 1926.

Copy 2, Gift of Mrs. E. Carwile LeRoy, 2009.