Paul Revere Osler: the other child.

Sir William Osler (1849-1919) is among the most honored and esteemed physicians of our time. His life, and that of his wife Grace Revere Osler (1854-1928), has been examined in great detail by historians and biographers and continues to be the subject of intensive scrutiny. Their son "Revere" (Edward Revere Osler) (1895-1917), who died in the Great War, is often mistakenly referred to as their only child. Grace had two previous pregnancies, having given birth to Paul Revere Osler, who lived but a week, early in their marriage in 1893 and to a stillborn infant during her first marriage to Dr. Samuel W. Gross in 1877. Information regarding these two events is often ill defined, cursory, or incorrect. New research provides further knowledge of these events and their impact, giving a fuller understanding and a more lucid historiography of the Oslers.

A gift from Oxford: the Osler-Thomas connection.

In June 1926, Dr. Henry M. Thomas Jr. ("Hal") received as a gift from Grace Osler in Oxford an Einhorn Duodenal Bucket Set that had belonged to Sir William Osler. The Thomases were a distinguished multigenerational physician family of Baltimore with high educational standards and major accomplishments in medicine and medical education. An extraordinary number of the Thomas women earned doctorates and made significant contributions in an era when this was a pioneering achievement. This is exemplified by Martha Carey Thomas, who earned a PhD in 1882 and served as dean and president of Bryn Mawr College for women. As a leading feminist and member of the Women's Fund Committee, she was a major force in providing the endowment that permitted the opening of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine under the strict stipulations that admission requirements include an undergraduate degree and that women be admitted on the basis of total equality with men. Osler established relationships that extended over three generations of the Thomas family during his Baltimore tenure, an influence that proved mutually beneficial.

William Osler, urolithiasis, and God's own medicine.

OBJECTIVES: To identify the contributions of Sir William Osler, who is regarded as the pre-eminent physician of his time, to urology, both objective and subjective. METHODS: A search of Osler's bibliography of over sixteen hundred publications, as well as his observations, some hitherto unpublished, on the episodes of renal colic that he personally experienced, was conducted. Osler was treated with morphine, which he characterized as "God's own medicine," and the origin of this description is explored. RESULTS: Osler published over 50 articles devoted to urologic topics, including 2 on vaginismus and Peyronie's disease; the former, by his fun loving alter ego, Egerton Yorrick Davis, was a hoax. Osler discusses urolithiasis and renal colic in his magnum opus, The Principles and Practice of Medicine, citing Montaigne's self description of his suffering as "unexcelled." Osler later personally experienced 2 episodes of renal colic, which he graphically and eloquently describes in his Lumleian Lectures of 1910. His descriptions of renal colic before and after his own experience are compared in the light of Plato's comment that a physician should experience the disease that he treats. CONCLUSIONS: William Osler was one of those giants who, in the early days of specialization, took all of medicine for their own. His contributions to urology were significant and include his descriptions of his own episodes of renal colic and the use of morphine-"God's own medicine."

Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) and the nucleus of Darkschewitsch: a discursive commentary.

Gertrude Stein is an icon of American literature whose scientific and medical background has become shrouded in obscurity. As an undergraduate at Radcliffe she was strongly influenced by William James and published two papers on motor automatism in the Psychological Review. As a medical student at Johns Hopkins University, her research on the nucleus of Darkschewitsch was quoted in Lewellys F Barker's acclaimed textbook on neuroanatomy; Stein's first book appearance. The background of the Russian neurologist Liverji O Darkschewitsch, little known in the West, is explored particularly in regard to his relationship and collaboration with Sigmund Freud whose letters provide considerable insight. Gertrude Stein failed to graduate with her class of 1901 at Johns Hopkins and soon after departed for an expatriate life in Europe devoted to art and literature.

William Osler's "The Nervousness of American Women".

Almost a century ago, William Osler, the foremost physician of his time, was approached by a leading periodical to write a series of articles on the health of the American woman. Osler, then the Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford, wrote an essay dealing with the psychological stresses affecting the "new woman" of the early 20th century at varying stages of her development and the "nervousness" that ensued. The article was never published as a result of his belated reservations on the propriety of a professional writing for a lay journal. Osler's thinking frequently reflected the spirit of his Victorian-Edwardian era, although at times he demonstrated advanced and prescient ideas about sexuality, not often the subject of discussion, even in circumspect form, in contemporary nonprofessional literature.

The Osler industry: insightful history or insipid hagiography?

The life and legacy of Sir William Osler (1849-1919) have been celebrated by nearly 1900 articles, 10 special issues of medical journals, several biographies, numerous lectures and orations, and regular meetings of 'Osler Societies' throughout the world. To what extent does this 'industry' reflect serious history as opposed to hagiography? The overarching purpose of this special issue of the Journal of Medical Biography is to present Osler as a real person from whom useful examples--both admirable and not so admirable--can be drawn for a 21st century readership.

Osler's lost thesis.

William Osler's thesis was undertaken in 1871 to fulfil the graduation requirements of the McGill Faculty of Medicine. The thesis was based upon 20 autopsies and the preparation of gross and microscopic specimens. To the despair of historians, only a portion, the Introduction, was thought to have survived and part of which appeared in Cushing's biography. In the Osler Library is the final version of the Introduction together with parts of newly found earlier drafts and several incomplete autopsy reports and commentaries from the body of the thesis. Osler's early literary and classical erudition is clearly seen, and his philosophy of pathology as the foundation of clinical medicine strongly expressed. In addition, from a fragment of commentary on one of the postmortems, a venture into parasitology is seen representing what appears to be the first identification of the beef tapeworm in Canada.