Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Third Supplement.djvu/443

 any case it affected only a relatively small part of the subject, the law of war, and revealed the paramount importance of a better organization of the peaceful relations of states. He strongly advocated a league of nations.

 OSLER, 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. 417