An Alabama Student and Other Biographical Essays

New York: Oxford University Press American Branch, 1908. Presumed First U.S. Edition, First printing. Hardcover. Good. [10], 334, [2] pages. Frontis illustration. Illustrations. Occasional footnotes. Cover has some wear and soiling. Some endpaper discoloration. Sir William Osler, 1st Baronet, FRS FRCP (July 12, 1849 - December 29, 1919) was a Canadian physician and one of the four founding professors of Johns Hopkins Hospital. Osler created the first residency program for specialty training of physicians, and he was the first to bring medical students out of the lecture hall for bedside clinical training. He has frequently been described as the Father of Modern Medicine and one of the "greatest diagnosticians ever to wield a stethoscope". Osler was a person of many interests, who in addition to being a physician, was a bibliophile, historian, author, and renowned practical joker. One of his achievements was the founding of the History of Medicine Society (formally "section"), at the Royal Society of Medicine, London. The contribution to medical education of which he was proudest was his idea of clinical clerkship - having third- and fourth-year students work with patients on the wards. He pioneered the practice of bedside teaching, making rounds with a handful of students, demonstrating what one student referred to as his method of "incomparably thorough physical examination." Soon after arriving in Baltimore, Osler insisted that his medical students attend at bedside early in their training. By their third year they were taking patient histories, performing physicals and doing lab tests examining secretions, blood and excreta. Includes essays on: John Y. Bassett, Thomas Dover, John Keats, Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Locke, Elisha Bartlett, William Beaumont, Pierre Louis, William Pepper, Alfred Stillé, Sir Thomas Browne, Fracastorius, and William Harvey. Abbott 132. Garrison & Morton 6722. Excerpt from the essay An Alabama Student: We honor those who respond to the call; we love to tell the story of their lives; and while feeling, perhaps, that we could not have been, with them, faithful unto death, yet we recognize in the power of their example the leaven which leavens the mass of selfishness about us. These mystics and chosen are often not happy men, often not the successful men. They see of the travail of their souls and are not satisfied, and, in the bitterness of the thought that they are not better than their fathers, are ready, with Elijah, to lie down and die. Tonight I wish to tell you the story of a man of whom you have never heard, whose name is not written on the scroll of fame, but of one who heard the call and forsook all and followed his ideal. When looking over the literature of malarial fevers in the South, chance threw in my way Fenner's Southern Medical Reports, Vols. I and II, which were issued in 1849-50 and 1850-51. Among many articles of interest I was particularly impressed with two by Dr. John Y. Bassett, of Huntsville, Ala.... I wrote to Huntsville to ascertain what had become of Dr. Bassett, and my correspondent referred me to his daughter, from whom I received a packet of letters written from Paris in 1836. I have her permission to make the extracts which are here given.