Oliver Wendell Holmes : remarks made at the Johns Hopkins Medical Society, October 15, 1894 / by William Osler, M.D.

  • Osler, William, Sir, 1849-1919.
Date:
1894
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Oliver Wendell Holmes : remarks made at the Johns Hopkins Medical Society, October 15, 1894 / by William Osler, M.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

    11/16 (page 9)
    I am reminded of that essay from time to time, but it was published in a periodical which died after one year’s life, and therefore escaped the wider notice it would have found if printed in the American Journal of the Medical Sciences. A lecturer at one of the great London hospitals referred to it the other day and coupled it with some fine phrases about myself which made me blush, either with modesty or vanity, I forget which. “ I think I will not answer the question you put me. I think oftenest of the ‘ Chambered Nautilus/ which is a favorite poem of mine, though I wrote it myself. The essay only comes up at long intervals. The poem repeats itself in my memory, and is very often spoken of by my correspondents in terms of more than ordinary praise. I had a savage pleasure, I confess, in handling those two professors—learned men both of them, skillful experts, but babies, as it seemed to me, in their capacity of reasoning and arguing. But in writing the poem I was filled with a better feeling—the highest state of mental exaltation and the most crystalline clairvoyance, as it seemed to me, that had ever been granted to me—I mean that lucid vision of one’s thought and all forms of expression which will be at once precise and musical, which is the poet’s special gift, however large or small in amount or value. There is more selfish pleasure to be had out of the poem—perhaps a nobler satisfaction from the life- saving labor.” Last year at the dinner of the American Gynaecological Society in Philadelphia a letter from Dr. Holmes was read referring to the subject in very much the same language as he uses in his letter to me. One or two of the paragraphs I may quote. “ Still I was attacked in my stronghold by the two leading professors of obstetrics in this country. “ I defended my position, with newr facts and arguments, and not without rhetorical fervor, at which, after cooling down for half a century, I might smile if I did not remember how intensely and with what good reason my feelings were kindled into the heated atmosphere of superlatives. “ I have been long out of the way of discussing this class of subjects. I do not know what others have done since my efforts; I do know that others had cried out with all their