OSLER LEGACY - THE CENTENNIAL OF THE PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE OF MEDICINE

William Osler (1849 to 1919) is the most revered physician of our time. He held successive professorships at McGill University, the University of Pennsylvania, The Johns Hopkins University, and Oxford University. A superb clinician, teacher, researcher, and writer, he combined these talents with a quintessential humanism. Among the most important of Osler's legacies is his textbook, The Principles and Practice of Medicine, now in its centennial year. The book, written in a remarkable literary style, was acclaimed as a masterpiece of precision clarity, and medical information. It went through 16 editions from 1892 to 1947 and quickly became the standard textbook of medicine. Osler's magnum opus profoundly influenced medical philanthropy, including the establishment of the Rockefeller Institute of Medical Research. Its major effect was on the education and practice of generations of physicians in the English-speaking world and beyond. The many translations of The Principles and Practice gave Osler's work a truly global influence.