Notman Photographic Archives, McCord Museum of Canadian
History. [1881]Notman Photographic Archives, McCord Museum of Canadian
History. [1881]
July 12th, 1999, marks the 150th anniversary of the birth, in Bond Head,
Ontario, of one of the most celebrated physicians the western world has
known. Sir William Osler (the baronetcy was conferred in 1911) obtained
his medical degree at McGill in 1872 and after two years of postgraduate
work abroad, returned to Montreal to teach in McGill's Faculty of Medicine
and to work as physician and pathologist at the Montreal General Hospital.
In 1884, Osler became Professor of Clinical Medicine at the University of
Pennsylvania. In 1889 he left for Baltimore to be Professor of Medicine
and Physician-in-Chief at the new Johns Hopkins Medical School and Hospital.
In 1904 Osler was offered the Regius Professorship at Oxford, a post he
took up in 1905 and held until his death in Oxford in 1919.
Everywhere Osler went, he left a lasting legacy of accomplishment, particularly
in the field of medical education. McGill, where he introduced many reforms,
provided a favourable environment for change. His teacher and colleague,
Robert Palmer Howard, described his effect on the Faculty of Medicine as
similar to that produced by a "potent ferment". At Pennsylvania
he introduced teaching at the bedside rather than in the lecture hall, and
opened a small clinical laboratory in the hospital. At the new Johns Hopkins
School of Medicine in Baltimore he and his colleagues William Halsted, William
Welch and Howard Kelly, created a centre of excellence for medical education,
with senior staff teaching at the bedside, and students included in the
team giving care. Osler's Principles and Practice of Medicine, published
in 1892, became the authoritative text for decades and inspired the foundation
of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research.
By the time Osler took up his post at Oxford, in 1905, he was at the
peak of his career and his fame, and was everywhere in demand. Despite hopes
for a rest and a change from his hectic schedule, he soon involved himself
in innumerable commitments and issues. The World War of 1914-1918, however,
exhausted him and brought personal tragedy in the death of his only son,
Revere, who was serving in France. Osler died in 1919, leaving a legacy
of humanism in medicine which survives to this day.
What was Montreal like in Osler's day? Industry was developing in suburbs
to the east and along the Lachine Canal to the west. New municipalities
were popping up along the city's periphery. Railway construction linked
the city with Halifax to the east and Vancouver to the west, not to mention
Chicago and New York. But things were not quite so rosy as the grand homes
of the Square Mile, the imposing offices of Saint James Street, or the pastoral
McGill campus might suggest.
Poverty was widespread, and working conditions were poor enough not only to produce major incidents of conflict between labour and capital, but also to attract the attention of different levels of government. And the period was by no means immune to linguistic, political and religious conflicts. Nor was Montreal a stranger to disease, as smallpox, cholera, and other epidemics dogged the residents of the city throughout the nineteenth century.
There was little agreement on what to do in the face of these threats. Public
health measures proved controversial - compulsory vaccinations and quarantines
brought riots more often than cooperation - throughout the period. Despite
an atmosphere of economic recession, however, which marked much of the period,
Montreal was slowly but surely entering its golden age as Canada's Metropolis.
Apart from buildings on the McGill Campus, old-Montreal, the church of St. John The Evangelist, and elements of the old Montreal General Hospital built in 1821 (partly demolished in the early 1950s to widen Dorchester Boulevard) architectural witnesses to Osler's Montreal have disappeared. It is still possible to trace the neighbourhoods of Montreal in which he lived and worked. Using Montreal street atlases, it is possible to find the names of colleagues on the lots their houses occupied. Contemporary photographs bring Osler and his Montreal haunts back to life.