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Born - 1849 Bond Head, Canada
Died - 1919
Academic Positions - 1874 - 1884 Professor of the Institutes of Medicine of his alma mater, McGill University; 1884 - 1889 Professor of Clinical Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania; 1889 - 1904 Professor of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University; 1904 Regius Professor of Medicine at the University of Oxford
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- First Pathologist of the Montreal General Hospital (1876). Volunteered his services in a smallpox epidemic, putting the post-mortem material under his control. (Previous to that time the medical staff made post-mortem examinations on the bodies of their own patients). Osler "went into the postmortem room with the joyous demeanor of the youthful Sophocles leading the chorus of victory after the battle of Salamis". Personally brought pathological anatomy to the level of an independent discipline at McGill.
- The greatest physician of his time (and arguably, any other).
- One of earliest investigators of blood platelets (1873).
- Described visceral complications of erythema multiforme (1895), a form of multiple telangiectasis (1901), and chronic cyanosis with polycythemia and enlarged spleen (1903).
- Devoted special monographs to the cerebral palsies of children (1889), chorea (1894), abdominal tumors (1895), angina pectoris (1897), cancer of the stomach (1900), and has done much Filigranarbeit, such as the description of the erythematous swellings (Osler's spots) in malignant endocarditis (1908).
- His book "Principles and Practice of Medicine" (1892, followed by a great many editions) was considered the best English text-book on the subject at that time.
- In his "Osler's Clinic" at Johns Hopkins much important work was done by others including Thayer (malarial fever), Councilman and Lafleur (amebic dysentery), Thayer and Blumer (microorganisms in gonorrheal endocarditis and septicemia, Thayer and Brown (eosinophilia in trichinosis), pneumothorax (by Emerson), and MacCallum and Opie's study of sexual conjugation in the malarial parasites.
- Historian, studied works of earlier American clinicians.
- Editor of Modern Medicine (1910) and also founder and editor of the Quarterly Journal of Medicine (1908).
- Helped found (and wrote history of ) the Association of American Physicians.
- At the last, took up medical bibliography, and all but achieved his great "Bibliothea Prima", a Hallerian catalogue of his wonderful collection of historical texts.
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