Do you have it in you?

Email received 5 September 2008

Sir William Osler is largely responsible for so many of the things which we take for granted in medicine -- medical education within a university environment, strong roots in basic science, application of scientific methods to clinical medicine, emphasis on bedside learning, involvement of students in hospital routines, and the residency system after medical graduation.

From a very humble childhood in the backwaters of rural Canada, he became the best-known, most-admired and influential physician in the world. The peak of his career was the 16 years (1889-1905) spent as Foundation Professor of Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University Medical School in Baltimore. The new hospital and university had been endowed by the bachelor merchant Johns Hopkins, who had profited in the Civil War, but was aware of the poor standards of medical education which prevailed in its aftermath.

The standard for Johns Hopkins was to be that "the seal of its diploma should be a guarantee that its possessor is not only a well educated physician in the fullest sense of the word, but that he has learned to think and investigate for himself, and is therefore prepared to undertake, without danger of failure from not knowing how to begin, the study of some of the many problems still awaiting solution".

Osler, the inspirational teacher and a more than competent clinician, was an obvious choice for Professor of Medicine and was appointed to the position at the age of 39.