Book Description
William Osler was born in a parsonage in backwoods Canada on July 12, 1849. In a life lasting seventy years, he practiced, taught, and wrote about medicine at Canada's McGill University, America's Johns Hopkins University, and finally as Regius Professor at Oxford. At the time of his death in England in 1919, many considered him to be the greatest doctor in the world. Osler, who was a brilliant, innovative teacher and a scholar of the natural history of disease, revolutionized the art of practicing medicine at the bedside of his patients. He was idolized by two generations of medical students and practitioners for whom he came to personify the ideal doctor. But much more than a physician, Osler was a supremely intelligent humanist. In both his writings and his personal life, and through the prism of the tragedy of the Great War, he embodied the art of living. It was perhaps his legendary compassion that elevated his healing talents to an art form and attracted to his private practice students, colleagues, poets (Walt Whitman for example) politicians, royalty, and nameless ordinary people with extraordinary conditions. William Osler's life lucidly illuminates the times in which he lived. Indeed, this is a book not only about the evolution of modern medicine, the training of doctors, holism in medical thought, and the doctor-patient relationship, but also about humanism, Victorianism, the Great War, and much else. Meticulously researched, drawing on many new sources and offering new interpretations, William Osler: A Life in Medicine brings to life both a fascinating man and the formative age of twentieth-century medicine. It is a classic biography of a classic life, both authoritative and highly readable.
Customer Reviews:
A Biography for all Doctors to Read.......2007-09-05
This is one of the most absorbing and readable biographies of Sir William Osler. Michael Bliss' book is considerably shorter and easier to read than the monumental Pulitzer Prize winning book by Harvey Cushing, Life of Sir William Osler.
As a retired general practitioner, Sir Willam's life and example is particularly close to what I have been practicing for the past forty years. When one reads this account one can begin to fathom this great man's ability, perception of human suffering, natural curiosity and dedication to the patient's welfare. This book reveals to us some of his other unique abilities and qualities namely his bibliophilia,vast reading, writing close to 170 papers, teaching scores of students, and having the honor of holding responsible and prestigious positions in the fields of medicine and the humanities. In addition to all these were his literally developing Johns Hopkins Hospital and University into the best in the world in his time and marshalled the achievements of hospitals in Philadelphia, Montreal and Toronto. As Regius Professor at Oxford from 1915 to 1919 he was a towering giant . He therefore stands in my eyes as the greatest doctor of the 19th.,20th. and perhaps the 21st. centuries. Not Sydenham, not Hunter, not even Lister could do all that Osler managed to do and do so with so much energy, dedication and humility.
We doctors who were not with him on hospital rounds, clinical demonstrations,lectures, lunches, teas and dinners and amazing conversations with him are very envious of those who were blessed with these opportunities.
He set a living example to his protege the way a doctor should live and work to earn that mark of nobility that the profession has had for centuries. He was the healer of all healers and inspired many to literally follow his foot steps. To mention two such would be too few but the likes of Harvey Cushing and Wilder Penfield come to mind and they both became superb neurosurgeons even though their hero, Osler , was an internist. I was astounded to read the great numbers of international luminaries who were treated by him. He ministered to doctors and their families, medical students and staff and was thus a doctor's doctor both as a teacher and physician.
His love of little children, the youth, the aged and his own extended family was exemplary to say the least.
How sad that such a doctor left the world at a mere 70 years of age. Three great nations, Canada, the U.S. and Britain all claim him as their own son. That honor and adulation no one and no doctor has the distinction of achieving. He served all of them so well.
We all stand in awe of this stalwart of modern medicine and Michael Bliss has opened our eyes to this individual so well.
A Brilliant Biography of a Brilliant Doctor.......2006-04-30
Despite almost a century since his death, William Osler persists as the `the grand old man of medicine', a life devoted to doctoring and doctors, who has supplied inspiration for many generations of physicians in the United States, Canada, Britain and the Continent.
Osler's life was a remarkable achievement as a medical teacher, (important in America in giving medical students real medical experience, as clinical clerks in hospitals) physician, prolific author, councillor, researcher and mentor to literarily thousands of men and women embarking on the profession in the medicos. It was the philosopher and great teacher, William James, who commented to Osler, marvelling and his energy and interests. Osler replied, that he was terribly conscious of time that it was a commodity he wished he could buy more of, as there was so much he could do with it. (p. 502) Osler's zest for work and unbounding passion for medicine set the standard for medical women and men in the twentieth century.
After reading Michael Bliss's brilliant biography of the pioneering neurosurgeon, Harvey Cushing, another remarkable medical man, and Osler's first biographer, it seemed only natural to read about Cushing's mentor. Both biographies are first rate and it really would be a disservice to compare them, because both works are thorough, educational, inspiring and definitive contributions to the greats of medical history.
Osler is the author of the currently classic text, The Principles and Practice of Medicine, which became the core textbook for students and practicing physicians during his life. It became a yearly task for the doctor to revise later editions, (sixteen in all) and in present time, for modern doctors, according to Bliss, has now become patient-centred and a historical document of the state of 19th century medicine.
Osler is famous for his bedside manner, the notion of empowering patients and autonomy in clinical practice. The man's faith in medicine and the legendary "aura" of healing that surrounded him, causing patients to regain the faith in their own healing ability, has caused a renewed interest in humanities joining forces with science, a proper balance, ensuring an optimal treatment and outcome for the patient.
How did the man accomplish so much in one lifetime? Similar to the 18th century philosopher, Immanuel Kant, people close to him could adjust their clocks to the second by the philosopher's movements. Osler was the same: his day was usually planned down to the minute, rising at seven and retiring by ten-thirty everyday.
He was also a man born with writing disease, never a day would go by without putting pen to paper, as his articles, correspondence, speeches and books certainly reveal. A consummate bibliophile, his collection of medical texts and related subjects, at the end of his life reached eight thousand, taking many years to catalogue, ending up being donated, as was his wish, to McGill University.
An excellent biography of an extraordinary man of medicine.
A Real Eminent Victorian.......2004-02-22
William Osler remains an iconic figure in American medicine. Osler is taken often to epitomize the physician who brings a crticial and scholarly approach to the bedside in conjunction with compassion and empathy. In this very well written biography, Bliss traces Osler's life, his achievements, and examines how he assumed iconic status and whether or not this status is deserved. Bliss is particularly well equipped to undertake this task. A well known specialist on Canadian history, he has written other fine books on medical history in a Canadian context.
Bliss presents Osler as a product of the rising British Victorian middle classes. The remarkable son of impressive parents, Osler was the son of an English naval officer turned Anglican minister and his equally intelligent wife. Raised in rural Ontario when this part of Canada was still a frontier, Osler's parents inculcated respect for learning, dedication to hard work, and clearly taught the value of community service. William Osler was not an outlier in this family. One of his brothers became a prominent businessman and two other brothers became important figures in Canadian law and politics. An early interest in natural history (biology) lead Osler to medicine. Trained in then provinicial Toronto and Montreal, he finished his education in some of the great teaching hospitals of Europe. Spotted by his mentors in Montreal as a future star, he was brought back to McGill to teach at the modest medical school. At McGill, Osler launched the career of careful clinical observation, pathologic correlation, and teaching that would propel him to the apex of his profession. His growing reputation led to appointments at the University of Pennsylvania and then to the nascent Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. At Hopkins, he became the first Professor of Clinical Medicine and introduced the teaching methods that revolutionized medical education in the USA. Relatively little of what Osler did was truly novel. Clinico-pathologic correlation has been standard method for expanding medical knowledge for decades and the clerkship method of teaching had been used in Britain and continental Europe for some time. Osler carried these methods to new heights. In his clinical practice, in his teaching, and in his great textbooks, Osler summarized and codified almost all of 19th century medicine. He was not a notable scientist, though his description and characterization of several important clinical conditions was very valuable, but he brought the best science of his time to the bedside and set clinical medicine on the course of drawing from systematic scientific work. In terms of his personal accomplishments and the example he set for his numerous trainees, his impact on 20th century medicine was immense.
Osler's reputation as a fine physician was deserved. Bliss shows him to be an warm and compassionate individual who was regarded often with great affection by his patients. Blessed with a generous and kindly personality, he enjoyed a wide circle of friends and a happy family life. In important respects, Osler exemplifies some of the most important and most admirable features of the Victorian period. His sense of virtue and service was very strong but he was not a prig and had relatively liberal values. Traveling in Germany towards the end of the 19th century, he noted and deplored rising anti-Semitism. He appears to have been devoid of overt anti-Semitic feelings and had a number of Jewish trainess, all of whom he appears to have treated with his usual combination of high expectations and civil behavior. Alone among the faculty at Hopkins, he supported the admission of women, though he did not really believe in female equality. Bliss spent years immersed in Osler's extensive writings and tremendously extensive correspondence, clearly likes and admires Osler, and his regard for Osler is reflected in the tone of this biography.
Osler was also that quintessential Canadian, the provincial boy who achieves fame on the wider stage of the USA or Britain. At the peak of his fame, he was the best known physician in the English speaking world and something of a minor celebrity.
Like all fine biographies, this book is about more than its central subject. It is valuable on the development of Canadian society, the growth of universities in the USA and Canada, the history of medicine, and the devastating impact of WWI.
This will be the standard biography of Osler and it is worthy of its subject.
the good doctor.......2002-09-18
This is, quite honestly, a hefty tome, but no less may be expected when writing about the greatest American physician who ever lived. Bliss presents us with a detailed, well-paced, and engaging biography of Dr. Osler, from his childhood days in Canada to his final years at Oxford. Being both a student of medicine and a Baltimorean (currently), I took a special interest to the chapters devoted to his post as the first chief of medicine at the Johns Hopkins Hospital.
Unlike the time-honored work by Cushing, Bliss's book is no hagiography; it makes no false overtures about Dr. Osler's iconic grandeur, instead letting the reader discover for himself (or herself) that Dr. Osler was, in fact, as great a man as people say he was. (All that being said, I still value the two-volume Cushing biography, and there is no way I will rid myself of the precious first-edition set I snatched up last year at the Maryland Historical Society bookshop!)
One need not practice Oslerolatry (that is, the veritable worship of Dr. Osler expressed by many of the older faculty at Hopkins and elsewhere) to appreciate this book, though having an interest in medicine and/or medical history may help. Critics often lament that American doctors no longer have any professional integrity, and that taking the Hippocratic Oath is a sham. Read this book, and discover how great the American physician can be...and THEN lament that they don't make them like they used to.
Absolutely delightful!.......2001-02-02
Any attempt to describe the life of such an illustrious personage, as one could imagine must be a rather daunting task. However, Michael Bliss's smooth-flowing rendering of Dr. William Osler's life is made not only manageable, but a sheer joy to read.
Of course this book will be compared with the innumerable number of other writings about William Osler, most notably of course the Cushing version. And Bliss clearly acknowledges the plethora of carefully collected documentations and personal correspondences that Cushing had accumulated in crafting his tale. However, I think this book stands on its own as a unique rendering of Osler mainly because of one simple fact. Bliss has had the luxury of time on his side to not just document the time and lives and the state of Medicine in the late 19th century, but most importantly, he relates it to the current, modern day state of affairs in those areas as well. He has woven a story that encompasses through the life of the great Osler, the tremendous influences of 19th medicine on modern day medicine. Even if one is not in the health-related professions or the biomedical sciences, one cannot miss the fact that this is a book as much about humanism as it is about medicine.
Biography, like history is riddled with biases, especially if it is about people and events that have revolutionazied mankind. This is particularly so in regards to William Osler, whose life and work have been immortalized, and a man who had acheived a legendary status even during his own life time. Bliss's work is as unbiased as it could possibly be given the already intrinsic biases about his subject. In this sense, this book is also unique from the previous biographies of Osler.
Overall, this is a most enjoyable read. This is definitely a "page-flipper" that takes you into the life, struggles, and triumps not only of Osler, but in a sense, of the entire human race.
Book Description
Sir William Osler (1849–1919) had a long and distinguished career as a physician and professor at McGill University, the University of Pennsylvania, the Johns Hopkins University, and finally, as the Regius Chair in Medicine at Oxford University. Over the course of his professional life, Osler gave many addressesâmostly to medical studentsâon medical ethics, medicine and the humanities, the relationship between the medical practitioner and the patient, and, as the titular essay makes clear, on the âway of lifeâ he advocated for the ethical physician. He remains an inspiration to many contemporary medical practitioners; there are active Osler Societies throughout the world.
While Osler’s talks were frequently published during his lifetime and they have been published individually and in different compilations since his death, none contain the over 1500 annotations that appear here, notes that serve to explain the many philosophical, biblical, historical, and literary allusions contained in Osler’s writings.
This thoroughly explicated selection of Sir William Osler’s writings will be cherished by physicians, medical students, nurses, philosophers, theologians, and ethicists in thisâand futureâgenerations.
Customer Reviews:
straight from the doctor's plume.......2002-09-18
If you are a student of medicine (current, former, or hopeful), chances are that you will read at least one essay, address, or other writing of Sir William Osler. And, like all students past, you won't have a clue about what in the world the good doctor was saying. Dr. Osler was a peerless medical scholar, an erudite man of letters whose vast learning towered over that of his contemporaries and even moreso of the doctors of today. He was to medicine what Samuel Johnson was to lexicography. Unless you have degrees in philosophy, philology, literature, and classics (in addition to medicine), you will most likely be just as confused as you will be inspired by Dr. Osler's writing.
Thankfully, we have this new book from Duke University Press. With more annotations than a Harvard Law Review issue, this well-selected sample of Dr. Osler's most well-known papers and addresses presents an effective "translation" to satisfy all medical scholars who, though they seek to emulate Osler's compassion and skill, just can't understand all of his references. When I first read "Aequanimitas," I felt like an ignoramus. After reading it again in this present volume, I felt like an enlightened student eager to carry the Aesculapian staff into the new milennium (or something like that). I highly recommend this book to all medical students and physicians who seek a model of professional excellence in Dr. Osler, but who have heretofore scratched their heads when reading his papers. Revisit "A Way of Life." Read the footnotes. Then don your white coat, tend to your patients, and be proud of the great American medical tradition set forth by Dr. Osler so many years ago.
Average customer rating:
- Not worth the money!
- Life in day-tight compartments.
- One day at a time.
- Walt Whitman's physician wisely prescribes compartmentalizn'
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Way of Life
William Osler
Manufacturer: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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Osler's "A Way of Life" and Other Addresses, with Commentary and Annotations
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ASIN: 0061418609 |
Customer Reviews:
Not worth the money!.......2004-07-04
This tiny book is way overpriced. If you want to get the whole idea of the speech, buy Dale Carnegie's "How to Stop Worrying and Start Living", which is much cheaper and much more valuable.
Life in day-tight compartments........2001-09-24
Dale Carnegie and Stephen Covey, to name two self-help authors, were quite impressed with Dr. Osler's plan for a happy, successful life, which is summed up by the maxim: "Live in day-tight compartments." Full of flowery classical references, Dr. Osler's speech to the Yale graduating class of 1913 remains pleasant and inspirational, and if you'd like to know just a little bit more about Osler than his physical sign of endocarditis, it makes a fun read.
It's a "charming little book," practically new-polished with the rough pumice stone (reading Ivy League commencement addresses makes me quote Catullus. So sue me) - and it's pretty, bound in tan vinyl. I really would take exception to the type face, though, a too-cute number called Goudy Mediæval. It looks like something an old lady fond of antimacassars would call 'elegant.'
Would make a super gift for a college - or med school - grad!
One day at a time........2000-12-13
The book is the text of an address that Sir William Osler gave at Yale University in 1913. He recommends approaching life as a series of "day-tight compartments," which he likens to the water-tight compartments that keep a ship afloat. (Interesting analogy just a year after the Titanic sank.)
His point is that worrying about either the past or the future is a burden that does nothing but reduce your effectiveness. If you focus your attention on what you have to do today, then over time, a string of successful days will make for a successful life. He quotes Thomas Carlyle: "Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand."
Osler primarily attributes his own success not to talent or intelligence, but to good habits, consistently practiced, day after day after day. This is a small book filled with simple, eloquent wisdom that is every bit as applicable today as it was in 1913.
Walt Whitman's physician wisely prescribes compartmentalizn'.......1999-01-28
He concludes with a moment with Walt Whitman who "never spoke to me much of his poems though occasionally he would make a quotation; but I remember late one summer afternoon as we sat in the window of his little house in Camden there passed a group of workmen whom he greeted in his usual way. And then he said: 'Ah, the glory of the day's work, whether with hand or brain! I have tried
To exalt the present and the real, To teach the average man the glory of his daily work or trade.'
Dr. Osler concludes: "In this way of life each one of you may learn to drive the straight furrow and so come to the true measure of a man."
Average customer rating:
- Engaging and highly readable case study of medical practice
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H.V.O.--The Life & Letters of Dr. Henry Vining Ogden, 1857-1931
Leonard Weistrop
Manufacturer: Milwaukee Acad of Medicine Pr
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0961707003 |
Customer Reviews:
Engaging and highly readable case study of medical practice.......1999-02-14
What a fascinating contribution to American medical history! Weistrop succeeds in transforming one man's story -- Ogden was a pioneering figure in biomedicine in Milwaukee, a provincial Midwestern city -- into a window on the historical cross currents of 19th and 20th Century America. Through dogged archival research, Weistrop uncovered Ogden's voluminous correspondence, and his book weaves together the personal and professional dimensions of Ogden's exemplary life. Weistrop deftly portrays the emerging professionalism of medicine and the specific concerns of a provincial elite: both precursors to the contemporary contours of medical practice in many parts of this country. As I understand, Weistrop himself is a practicing physician, so his book can be read as both a historical document and an exemplar of professional self-consciousness.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent historical perspective about a man and his works.......1998-01-05
This textbook, for that is what it really is, will enrapture the novice and expert seeker of medical history. Dr. Cushing has written about Dr. Osler in a honest, warm and human manner. Current students of medicine will revel in the tidbits of knowledge and in the practice of medicine in the early 1900's. Dr. Osler's life and his exploits are legendary in the medical community and this book gives tribute to a person who touched others in a most positive manner. Required reading for all M.D.'s.
Average customer rating:
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Osler continues to inspire physicians. (New Book Conveys Medical Ideals).(William Osler): An article from: Internal Medicine News
Robert Finn
Manufacturer: International Medical News Group
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Binding: Digital
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ASIN: B0009FK8CG
Release Date: 2005-07-31 |
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Internal Medicine News, published by International Medical News Group on March 1, 2003. The length of the article is 1198 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Osler continues to inspire physicians. (New Book Conveys Medical Ideals).(William Osler)
Author: Robert Finn
Publication:
Internal Medicine News (Magazine/Journal)
Date: March 1, 2003
Publisher: International Medical News Group
Volume: 36
Issue: 5
Page: 1(2)
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Book Description
This fascinating book examines Western perceptions of war in and beyond the nineteenth century, surveying the writings of novelists, anthropologists, psychiatrists, poets, natural scientists, and journalists to trace the origins of modern philosophies about the nature of war and conflict.
Book Description
This digital document is an article from The Australian Journal of Politics and History, published by University of Queensland Press on March 1, 1999. The length of the article is 1036 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: WAR MACHINE: The Rationalisation of Slaughter in the Modern Age.(Review)
Author: Paul R. Bartrop
Publication:
The Australian Journal of Politics and History (Refereed)
Date: March 1, 1999
Publisher: University of Queensland Press
Volume: 45
Issue: 1
Page: 154(1)
Article Type: Book Review
Distributed by Thomson Gale
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