Sir William Osler and Medical Libraries

Abstract

Before discussing Osler’s views on medical libraries, I want to review briefly the general chronology of his professional career, and then to present an overview of the place he occupies in medicine. Osler was born in Bond Head, Ontario, Canada in 1849, and following a two year period of study at Trinity College, Toronto, transferred from the clinical program he had been pursuing to the study of medicine at McGill University in Montreal. Following the completion of his medical degree in 1872, he studied elsewhere, returning to the Faculty of Medicine as Professor of Clinical Medicine until 1884. He then accepted the position of Professor of Clinical Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, leaving there in 1889 to become Professor of Medicine and Physician-in-Chief at Johns Hopkins University and Hospital. In 1905, he accepted his final professional appointment as Regius Professor of Medicine in Oxford where he died in 1919. His career has special significance, resting on the three English language medical traditions of Canada, the United States and Great Britain.