Osler in Cushing and Bliss: Personal Notes of a Seasoned Oslerian

When I graduated from Western Reserve Medical School in 1935, I was given a copy of the third edition of Osler's Aequanimitas by the Lilly Company. ¹ Robert Kimbrough has told us that 150,000 copies of this book were given to graduating medical students between 1932 and 1953. ² At that point in my career, I had little time or inclination to read many of these essays. Being educated in Cleveland, however, I was taught by several Johns Hopkins-educated and Osler-imbued faculty. Thus, I had heard more about Osler and Cushing (who was Cleveland born) than many medical students of that day, and most today. In fact, I find that recent graduates seem to know more about my remote relative by marriage, Carrie Nation (the zealous, ax-wielding saloon-smasher and prohibition advocate), than about William Osler. I am hoping that Michael Bliss's biography will turn this around.

It was Harvey Cushing's life of Sir William Osler that really introduced me to Osler. ³ I read it ravenously, and made copious notes while convalescing from an illness following the completion of my residency. It became an important part of my education and changed my life. I hope this new biography will do the same for others. My first Cushing was a library copy; I now own seven, and all but two have been gifts. Perhaps because of this devotion, it would not have occurred to me that anyone would ever dare write another biography of Osler. When Charles Roland suggested the need for one, ⁴ I was nonplused, although I remembered Cushing's words: "Here are merely the outlines for the final portrait, to be painted out when the colours, lights, and shadows come in time to be added." ⁵ This, Professor Bliss has done.

I first learned of his courageous intention a few years ago when he spent a week in the George Dock Collection at the Huntington Library in San Marino, near where I live. I saw him a little while later in the Esther Rosenkrantz Osler Collection at the University of California in San Francisco. These were just a small part of the daunting challenge facing Michael Bliss. He had to plow through a number of Osler archives on two continents, and then cope with the vast amount of material written about Osler since Cushing's 1925 biography. Finally, his publisher warned, Bliss must limit his book to five hundred pages or less for it to have any hope of selling.

Bliss had a few advantages over Cushing: much of the primary source material had been consolidated in several places, and he did have a laptop computer. I do suspect, however, that he had fewer secretaries than Cushing--but then again, he did not have Lady Osler looking over his shoulder. He ended up with a volume one third as long and half as heavy as Cushing's (and this after Cushing had reduced his from one million words to six hundred thousand at the insistence of his publisher).

Despite the differences, most events come out the same in each biography--but in Bliss, there are fewer distractions and "fillers." I must say, however, that I relished much of this in my youth. The many people, events, and classical allusions gave me an education that I had previously missed. High school in Texas and five years at San Diego State College studying chemistry, biology, and history had exposed me to few of the classics. Cushing introduced me to medical writing of the near and distant past, its authors, and the collecting zeal of bibliophiles.

I was interested to see that Bliss chose "the young Professor at McGill" as his frontispiece photograph of Osler, just as Cushing had done--but closer up, not framed, and creating...