CANADIANS.
Dr. William Osler.
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.