Thumbnail sketches of eminent physicians : Sir William Osler / [J.C. Trent].

Date:
[1940]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Thumbnail sketches of eminent physicians : Sir William Osler / [J.C. Trent]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    18/36 (page 16)
    benefit of Dr. Cullen’s teaching, and was then sent on to Cleveland. He eventually succeeded Dr. Robb in the chair of gynecology at West¬ ern Reserve. There is a traditional story about Sir Wil¬ liam at Bond Head which has recently been put before the public again in a Toronto pa¬ per. It is a purely mythological tale about his being put out in a field where the bull calf was tethered, just as the calf was to be fed his pail of milk. Naturally one cannot visualize an intelligent parent placing a small child in such a dangerous position, and I am able to explain the odd story. In Ward C of the Johns Hopkins Hospital there happened to be an old lady who wor¬ shipped Sir William. She had become very tiresome in her frequent statements that “he must have had a wonderful mother and a wonderful bringing up.” The temptation to make a good story was more than he could resist. I can remember Lady Osier’s remark when hearing of the incident: “Willie, you ought to be ashamed of yourself; that poor old lady will believe that story.” One of Sir William’s many attributes was his early cultivation of the art of correspon¬ dence. In this connection there came before me a few years ago an interesting detail of his life at the Checkley school in Barrie. Mil- burn, one of his intimate boyhood associates, had been at school with Osier. After his leav¬ ing, there began a correspondence which continued between them up to the last year of Osier’s life. Milburn’s daughter, still liv¬ ing, told me that the family had kept every one of Osier’s letters to her father and that they were preserved in their old home. It required but little persuasion to show Miss Milburn that these letters should be where members of the medical profession and col¬ lectors could readily peruse them. The Osier Library at McGill did not feel able to pur¬ chase them, nor did the Academy of Medicine in Toronto, but a communication with Schu- man of New York resulted in the letters being handed over to him for a satisfactory sum. Whether these have been kept as one collection, we do not know. Thev numbered nearly three hundred, beginning in the Bar¬ rie days and continuing from Dundas, Wes¬ ton, Toronto, Montreal, Philadelphia, Balti¬ more and Oxford. Typical schoolboy letters in the beginning, they give the impression that early in their lives Milburn acquired the habit of going to Sir William for advice, which, I gather from Milburn’s daughter, he gave freely throughout the years. Sir William’s consideration of early made friends can be demonstrated many times. Locke was one of the trio mentioned as mak¬ ing up the “Barrie Bad Boys.”(1) He died early in life, leaving a widow and three children. In Cushing’s Life of Osler one notes a ref¬ erence to the help given the Locke children in their education. The Locke boy, a gradu¬ ate in medicine, was brought down to Johns Hopkins for some advanced training, was directed to New York, and there became a very successful practitioner. One of the daughters became a very able and charming superintendent of nurses in the Toronto Gen¬ eral Hospital. Of Sir William’s early life in Dundas one knows little. He may have attended the public school in these very early years, and seems to have gone to the Dundas High School, from which he was summarily expelled. In connec¬ tion with this matter, I have the recollections of my father, who was at school at this time with the growing Osier boy. A shadow had been cast on the excellence of the high school by the fact that the pupils had discovered that the classical master owed part of his success to “cribs” concealed in his desk. This doubtless did not help in the maintaining of discipline. Added to this side light was the active dislike that the boys had for the mas¬ ter of the lower school, as well as for his 1. Editor’s note: The other two were William Osier and Ned Milburn.