Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Third Supplement.djvu/444

 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 418