Onward Howard Kelly, Marching as to War

Abstract

IN 1905, THE PROMINENT ARTIST JOHN SINGER SARGENT was commissioned to paint a portrait of the four founding physicians of the Johns Hopkins Hospital: William Welch, William Osler, William Halsted, and Howard Kelly. That June, Welch, Halsted, and Kelly sailed for Southampton and traveled by rail to London. There they reunited with Osler, who had left Hopkins in 1904 to become the Regis Professor of Medicine at Oxford, and all four made their way to Sargent’s studio near the Chelsea Embankment. Welch, Osler, Halsted, and Kelly posed in their academic robes and hoods. For days, they sat under a skylight in a stifling hot, poorly ventilated room redolent with the noxious fumes of oil paint, turpentine, and sweat. On some afternoons, all four were in the studio; on others, each came alone. By the time his subjects quit London and returned to their demanding careers, Sargent had succeeded in creating a divine gem of portraiture. On a canvas measuring 327.7 271.8 cm (10.75 9.08 feet), the four physicians are arranged around a book-strewn reading table and an antique Venetian globe. Osler, the great physician, appears as if about to leap to his feet to aid a patient in distress; Welch, the pathologist and medical statesman, sits supremely satisfied, his fingers resting on the leaves of an open tome; standing in Welch’s shadow with a dark, brooding pall cast over his face is the dour, cocaineand morphine-addicted surgeon, William Halsted. And if you look closely at Kelly, the gynecologist, he seems almost beatific or, at least, the most saintly of men. That is because the central devotion of Kelly’s life was his savior Jesus Christ. So tightly intertwined was the connection between Kelly’s daily endeavors and his Protestant Episcopalian beliefs that he often knelt in prayer before examining a patient or beginning an operation. Until, that is, many of his uncomfortable colleagues asked him to stop. Today, Kelly is best recalled for inventing several operating tools and devices, including the clamp that bears his name and that is still requested in operating rooms all over the world. In his day, however, he was widely regarded as a master of pelvic and genitourinary surgery. Many have credited Kelly with establishing gynecology as a bona fide specialty, and his superb descriptions of diseases of the urinary tract, appendix, abdomen, and female reproductive organs continue to inform physicians who take the time to go to the library stacks to pull down his richly illustrated textbooks. Kelly also found the time to author or edit several authoritative tomes on history, biography, botany, natural history, mushrooms, snakes, and even canoeing. On Osler’s recommendation, Welch called Kelly to help establish the Johns Hopkins Hospital and Medical School in 1889. On relocating to Baltimore from the University of John Singer Sargent (1856-1925), Four Doctors, 1906. Oil on canvas. 327.7 271.8 cm. Courtesy of The Alan Mason Chesney Medical Archives of The Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, Baltimore, Maryland.