The most eminent medical man of Canada, and perhaps of the world, is
Dr. William Osler, who has recently been appointed by King Edward
to the exalted position of Regis Professor of Medicine at Oxford
University, England. This means that Dr. Osler will be the chairman of
the faculty of this great university. He will be its head. No greater
distinction than this could come to any medical man. Aside from the
honor of his appointment and the salary of $10,000 per year, his
position will bring Dr. Osler a private practice which will make him
one of the most highly compensated physicians in the world.
Dr. Osler was born at Bondhead, Ontario, July 12, 1849. His father was
a minister of the Church of England. Dr. Osler went to school at Port
Hope, Ont., and afterward entered Trinity University in Toronto, where
he received his academic degree. The only distinction he attained at
college was the reputation of being a hard student. He followed out
then the injunction which he has since often made to students of his
own, namely, “love to labor.”
After leaving the University, Dr. Osler entered the office of Dr.
Bonell in Toronto as an assistant. Here he studied three years and then
entered McGill University at Montreal, where he was graduated in 1872.
He then went abroad, and returning to Canada in 1875 was elected to the
chair of Institute of Medicine at McGill. Some remarks of his apropos
of his first plunging into teaching are worth quoting. “My first
appearance before the class filled me with tremulous uneasiness and an
overwhelming sense of embarrassment. I soon forgot this, however, in my
interest in the work. Whatever success I achieved then and throughout
my subsequent career has been due to enthusiasm and constitutional
energy.”
Four years after Dr. Osler became connected with McGill he was
appointed a member of the visiting staff of the Montreal General
Hospital. In 1883 he was elected a fellow of the Royal College of
Physicians of London, England.
Dr. Osler became in 1884 professor of medicine at the University of
Pennsylvania. He was invited in 1889 to create the chair of Professor
of the Practice and Principles of Medicine at the Johns Hopkins
Medical School at Baltimore. It was his work here that lifted him into
world-wide prominence as a physician. In 1890 he was elected dean of
the medical faculty of Johns Hopkins. Meanwhile he had built up a very
large private practice, and was one of the doctors called upon to treat
President McKinley after he had been shot in Buffalo.
In spite of the fact that Dr. Osler’s great powers of concentration
have been one of the factors in his remarkable success in his
profession, he is a strong believer in having a broad outlook, and
avoiding too great an absorption in any one line of work. He has said
in an address to students:
“Do not become so absorbed in your profession as to exclude all outside
interests. Success in my profession depends as much upon the man as
upon the physician. The more you see of life, outside the circle of
your work, the better equipped you will be for the struggle. While
medicine is to be your calling, see to it that you have also some
intellectual task which will keep you in touch with the world of art
and letters. When tired of anatomy refresh your mind with Oliver
Wendell Holmes, Keats, Shelley and Shakespeare.
“I advise you to have no ambition higher than to join the noble band
of general practitioners. These are generous hearted men, with well
balanced, cool heads, who are not scientific always, but are learned in
the wisdom of the sick room. No man can stand higher in the love and
respect of the community, and wield a more potent influence, than the
family doctor....
“As to your work, I have a single bit of advice which I give with the
earnest conviction of its paramount influence in any success which may
have attended my efforts in life: Take no thought of the morrow. Live
neither in the past nor the future, but let each day’s work absorb your
entire energy and satisfy your widest ambition.”