The Story of Sir William Osler
A brief biography of Sir William Osler
The Eponymous Osler


Sir William Osler

b. 12 July 1849, Bond Head, Canada
d. 29 Dec 1919, Oxford, England

Physician
Professor of Medicine at McGill University,
Professor of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania
Professor of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University
Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford University

Sir William Osler was, without doubt, the most famous physician in the English-speaking world at the turn of the century, and is among the greatest doctors who ever lived. He trained in medicine at the University of Toronto and McGill (M.D., C.M., 1872), where he began his teaching career.

In 1889 he became the first professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University. He was particularly expert in diagnosis of diseases of the heart, lungs and blood, and his textbook, The Principles and Practice of Medicine (published 1982), was considered authoritative for more than 30 years. He helped create the system of postgraduate training for physicians that is followed today.

Sir Osler's descriptions of the inadequacy of treatment methods for many disorders was a major factor leading to the creation of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New York City. He moved to England in 1905 on being appointed Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford, and was created a baronet in 1911.

His ashes rest in the Osler Library, Montreal.

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When Osler was made a Baronet in 1911, a coat-of-arms had to be designed. He chose the beaver and the fleur-de-lys for Canada, and his own motto "Æquanimitas". The fish are Cornish pilchards: Osler's ancestors were seafaring folk from Falmouth. The "red hand of Ulster" immediately above the central fish is the sign of the baronet.

As with all great founding-fathers, Osler's influence will exist as long as there Western medicine survives, whether we recognize it or not. To recognize that influence, to reflect upon our direction, to be able to step outside our world and viewed it as Osler must have once done, as an object in progress and in need of continual perfection, is one of the greatest services a doctor can do for medicine.

Among Osler's greatest traits is a transcendental nobility that is seldomly seen today, and rare, certainly, even in his own day. How many doctors or mentors can utter:

"It has been said that "in patience ye shall win your souls," and what is this patience but an equanimity which enables you to rise superior to the trials of life? Sowing as you shall do beside all waters, I can but wish that you may reap the promised blessing of quietness and of assurance forever, until:

Within this life,
Though lifted o'er its strife,

you may, in the growing winters, glean a little of that wisdom which is pure, peaceable, gentle, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy."

I, for one, truly admire his wisdom, humanity, and knowledge. The key, I think, is to never think of these traits as separate things, but as one thing, as the self-expression of a compassionate human being challenged by a passionless universe.


The Eponymous Osler:

A collection of all known medical entities that bear the name and legacy of Sir William Osler (from Whonamedit.com)

Osler-Libman-Sacks syndrome

Final stage of systemic lupus erythematodes. An atypical, verrucous, nonbacterial, valvular and mural endocarditis. A visceral manifestation of systemic lupus erythematosus disseminatus, characterized by the presence of systolic and diastolic apical murmurs and/or chordae tendinea of sterile, verrucous lesions composed of fibrin strands. Polymorphonuclear leukocytes, lymphocytes, and histiocytes infiltrate the affected structures. The syndrome is seldom autonomous but is part of a more widespread systemic collagen disorder.

Osler's filaria

Osler described a previously unknown parasitic nematode among the pups at the kennels of the Montreal Hunt Club. This organism, Strongylus canis bronchialis, was renamed Filaria osleri by Thomas Spencer Cobbold in 1879, and in 1921, Oslerus osleri by Maurice Hall.

Osler's manoeuvre

In pseudohypertension, the blood pressure as measured by the sphygmomanometer is artificially high because of arterial wall calcification. Osler's manoeuvre can detect this condition. It is an attempt to compress the radial artery sufficiently to prevent palpation of the radial pulse past the point of compression. If this pulse is still palpable, then the artery is sclerosed. This could lead to the diagnosis of hypertension when, in fact, the blood pressure could be normal.

Osler's Nodules

Painful indurated areas on the pads of the fingers and toes, the thenar and hypothenar eminences, seen in bacterial endocarditis, often preceded by an aura of burning, throbbing pruritus, or tingling. In acute bacterial endocarditis, they are associated with minute infective emboli; in subacute bacterial endocarditis, they are associated with immune complexes and small-vessel arteritis of skin. The causative organism is Staphylococcus aureus.

Osler's Syndrome (Ball-Valve gallstone)

A syndrome of recurrent episodes of colic pain, with typical radiation to back, cold shiverings and fever; and possibly jaundice. Due to the presence in Vater’s diverticulum of a free-moving gallstone which is larger than the orifice, periodically obstructing the bile outflow in a manner similar to that of a ball-valve.

Sphryanura osleri

While Lecturer of Institutes of Medicine at Montreal in 1874, Osler found a trematode worm in the gills of a newt, which was subsequently named Sphryanura Osleri by Robert Ramsay Wright (1852-1933), professor of Biology at Toronto.

Vaques-Osler arythremia

A relatively rare chronic disease of the blood in which the red cells are increased in number. The spleen becomes enlarged, and the face is a deep red rather than truly cyanotic. Occasionally reported in childhood, it occurs mostly in middle-aged males, in which increased erythrocyte count (reaching sometimes 10.000.000 per cmm), blood volume, erythroblastic activity, and blood viscosity is associated with cyanosis and splenomegaly. Headache, gas pain, and belching are the typical presenting symptoms. Long list of other symptoms. Etiology unknown. Belongs to the group of myeloproliferative syndromes. When associated with liver cirrhosis, this disorder is known as the Mosse syndrome. It is more frequently observed in people of Jewish extraction.

Osler-Weber-Rendu Disease (or hereditary hemorrhagic
     telangiectasia)

In 1901 Sir William Osler reported on a family with skin and mucous membrane telangiectases and recurrent epistaxis. Despite the thoroughness of this paper, pulmonary lesions were apparently still unrecognized.
 
HHt is an autosomal dominany disorder manifested by telangiectases of the skin and mucous membranes associated with bleeding tendency. Larger lesions may affect the nasopharynx, CNS, lung, liver and spleen, as well as the urinary and GI tracts. Arteriovenous malformations (AVMs) may be present and are a source of significant morbidity and mortality.