Abstract
SIR WILLIAM OSLER is famous for many things. He was a great physician of two continents, a scholar, a humanist, a teacher and a medical administrator. His work as a scientist has perhaps received less recognition, yet it is revealed on every page of his famous text-book of medicine. As Harvey Cushing wrote1: “The volume, indeed, was what might be called a practical pathology in which were given the results of modern investigation, microscopical, bacteriological, and chemical. On this foundation was built up the symptomatology and diagnosis of disease. . . .” His school-master, the Rev. W. A. Johnson, at Weston, near Toronto, introduced him to the study of biology, geology and the use of the microscope. At eighteen years of age, Osier began to tabulate and study his collection of the Diatomaceæ ; and his interest in biology was stimulated further, when he entered the Toronto Medical School in 1868, by Dr. James Bovell. “I am at Dr. Bo veil‘s every Saturday and we put up preparations for the microscope,” he writes.
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MACNALTY, A. Osler as a Scientist*. Nature 162, 346–347 (1948). https://doi.org/10.1038/162346a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/162346a0
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