William Osler Biography and Works.

Born on July 12, 1849, Sir William Osler was one of the ‘Big Four’ founding professors at Johns Hopkins Hospital as the first Professor of Medicing and founder of the Medical Service there. (The “Big Four” were William Osler, Professor of Medicine; William Stewart Halsted, Professor of Surgery; Howard A. Kelly, Professor of Gynaecology; and William H. Welch, Professor of Pathology.) Osler created the first residency program for specialty training of physicians and he was the first to bring medical students out of the lecture hall for bedside clinical training.

He has been called the “Father of modern medicine”. Osler was a pathologist, physician, educator, bibliophile, historian, author and renowned practical joker.

William Osler was born in Bond Head, Canada West (now Ontario) and raised after 1857 in Dundas, Ontario. He was called William after William of Orange, who won the Battle of the Boyne on July 12, 1690.

TRIVIA

Perhaps Osler’s greatest contribution to medicine was to insist that students learn from seeing and talking to patients and the establishment of the medical residency. This latter idea spread across the English-speaking world and remains in place today in most teaching hospitals.

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“The young doctor should look about early for an avocation, a pastime that will take him away from patients, pills and potions…”