Osler As a Bibliophile

Zbc Boston flDefcícal anb Surgical Journal TABLE OF CONTENTS April 1, 1920 ADDRESSES How to Conduct Nutrition Clinics and Classes.351 Physician as 351 Osler as a Bibliophile. By Edward C. Streeter, M.D., Boston. 335 A an Ambassador. 351 Osler as his Students Knew Him. By Joseph II. Pratt, M.D., Medical Notes. Boston. 338 MISCELLANY Osler in the Early Days at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. By W. T. Councilman, M.D., Boston. 341 Report upon Health Education by the Joint Committke on Legislation of the Massachusetts Medical Society ORIGINAL ARTICLE and the Massachusetts Homeopathic Medical Society. 356 Renal Function in Vascular Hypertension. By James P. Resolutions on the Death of Dr. Southard... 357 O'Hare, M.D., Boston. 345 United States Civil Service Examinations. 357 EDITORIALS Complimentary Luncheon to General Leonard Wood.358 Child Hygiene in Missouri. 349 Transportation to Meeting of American Medical Associa- Narcotic Drug Regulations. 350 tion, New Orleans, April 26 to 30. 353 reality. Acting on this conviction, "without ' ' fraud, cozen or delay, he happily brought every student with whom he came in touch into a OSLER AS A BIBLIOPHILE. proper system of relations with the achieving minds, the heroic inquiring spirits of past ages. BY Edward C. Streeter, M.D., Boston. Early in his course as teacher he faced this au- In attempting to take a level of the affec- gust relationship squarely. He became, like tions of Dr. Osier we will doubtless find that Boerhaave, one of the greatest exemplars of the next to the love of men with him came love of historical method of medical teaching that ever books. Throughout his life he revealed the has been. In establishing this method in Amer- most amazingly vital concern for both—viewing ica he did the impossible, for this is an unhast- with an equal eye the achievements of the past, ing, laborious method, little suited to the ge- and the promise of things of incomparable value nius of our people. and worth in the living present. A measure of Osier had an instinct for revival and the re- charm men the which he exerted over living newal of grace and force in everything that he came from his converse with the dead. He touched. His range in ordering the topics dis- strove mightily to reconcile the prodigals of the cussed in the Book and Journal Club was wide present with the forgiving Fathers of medicine— indeed—Assyrian Medicine down to the last to turn them from husks to their former meat faintest foot-falls on Cathedral Street. He and the paternal blessing. In him the love of transmuted and touched to higher issues the good books was a flame, never idle, as in those choice estrays of medicine, recalled forgotten who have only a vain and prodigal humor for worthies like Richard Morton and Dover, and this sort of never idle for a furniture, moment, regrouped and shrewdly rearranged some of but was used as a Promethean torch to reillu- the figures in the old medical hierarchy. He mine the light of old authors, in present danger re-invested all his favored ones with historic of and out. A conflict between failing passing reality, launched them from his humanity as the was inconceivable to past and the present genuine forces in the world of science, no him. All that is, is Greek ; or, at least, all that longer lying in bonds in the imagination of the is, is derived. This is the ultimate irreducible studious, merely, but redelivered, given voice *Delivered at a memorial meeting for Dr. Osler held by the He Harvard Medical Society, January 20, 1920. again in the land of the living. shared Browning's power, "the life in him abolished physician who does not need a library sinks to the death in things." Servetus reasserted him- the level of a cross-counter prescribe!-." "To self through him; Linaere, Fracastorius, Leoni- study the phenomena of disease without books cenus and the entire group of humanists, all is to sail an uncharted sea, while to study books the master spirits of medicine, Vesalius, Har- without patients is not to go to sea at all." vey, Hunter, reappareled, "bright-harnessed Such was his attitude toward texts in general, and in order serviceable." Here was a new the ordinary hand-apparatus of the practi- way to pay old debts, on a convivial plan, by tioner, and the vast, limitless library of mod- adopting your creditor, giving him tenant- ern contributions, current accumulations, rights in the very house of life in which you which he publicly aided so many centres to live. amass and privately aided so many students to Every English-speaking worker in the medi- use. "Only a maker of books can appreciate at their true value." On cal sciences today has been, in a sense, a stu- the labors of others the same occasion on which Osier said this dent of William Osier, so much so that it will (the appear the height of folly to attempt to calcu- dedication of the Boston Medical Library), he also to in each late the good M'hieh will ultimately come from said', "I should like see library his revival of the historical method. Neglect a select company of Immortals set apart for address of the sources was to him unspeakably shock- special adoration." In fact this short on "Books and Men" is the of his ing. "The beggarly recognition or base indif- key speech to ference" meted out to the men whose minds campaign quicken the study of the classics His in have fertilized science in every direction in of medicine. devotion to this alcove our libraries was intense to have satis- times past, touched him to the quick as an act enough fied '"Philobiblion. " of ingratitude. Last year in May he shamed the quaint author of the the "Greats" in Oxford on this score, using Osier's high pleadings for the "Princes of the the old clarion tones which he had used with blood," the books born within the purple, are students in Baltimore. He brought the world singularly happy products of his mind. "Nay, do as in a as Milton to book—to a realizing sense of the evolution- they preserve vial," ary process behind all the swift revolutions of would say, "the purest efficacy and extraction of medical doctrine. An evolutionist can no more that living intellect that bred them." Here was the of fresh and neglect sources, the original texts and docu- he marrow persuasion, as ments relating to discoveries and advances in clear, as witty and winning, as Holmes at his the science and art of medicine, than best. a just and loyal soul made perfect could Xor were conditions in this country adverse reject the fathers of his fathers. Osier's or hopeless in respect to the gentle art of book- school deals with the Founders in a spirit collecting when Osier first came among us. of gratitude and loyalty; but only "one whose Chadwick, Holmes, Hunt, Treadwell, Bow- best friends have been the old humanists," like ditch, and others in New England were himself, could link arms and walk away thus well launched in this library movement, familiarly with departed heroes. How ten- while in the southern tier of states were Gross, derly they requited him, their Daysman, we Lewis, Weir Mitchell, Kelly, Keen, Jacobs; know from his blithe whimsical account of such in New York, Jacobi and Pilcher. Mightiest walks with the great. He speaks of them quite book hunter of all was Billings at the head simply—as though he had but walked down of our National Medical Library, the Surgeon- Monument Street with President Gilman or General 's of today. Dr. Kelly. Sir William's acquaintance with Many of these men had amassed great store the medical classics extended over fifty years; of rarissimi and choicest examples of the medi- in that time he had come to know every pri- cal classics, even before Osier made his first tour mary contribution ; every precious accent in of study to Boston in 1876. Dr. Kelly says the rich and varied utterance. that when he first met Osier in Philadelphia A "doctor sine libris," such as old Fuller "He stayed to dine in Norris Square, and was describes, was anomalous indeed; a Caliban particularly interested in my collection of old ' ' in the eyes of this Prospero. Books are tools, medical books." What a zest and high appe- doctors are craftsmen," insisted Osier. "A tite for the written record of great minds in all ages was in his guest, not even Dr. Kelly have been etched upon Osier's book-plate—it could have pointed out that night. It was was Savigny's devise but it fits Sir William. quite impossible that anyone who had the tinc- And I fancy that the man who had care, up to ture of old letters in him, could fail to share the outbreak of the war, of Sir William's li- Osier's enthusiasm, his inveterate and almost brary at Norham Gardens, Oxford, had tail dangerous exaltation in the presence of rare that he could do in just keeping the books to- volumes. He had Petrarch's reverence for great gether, for the owner had a habit of allocating books. He loved to see them in reverent hands, his best possessions where they could be best in fair estate and comely, yet he loved the used, on the principle that books belong to those "ragged veterans" as well as Lamb did. who prize them most. You would say that a The range of his taste at this period, like general thaw and dissolution of his library was in the breadth of his learning, was astounding.

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