Reading Like An Osler

Adapted from Michael Lacombe’s introduction to Osler’s Bedside Library.

In Osler’s Bedside Library we cover those classics you have always intended to read.  I know, you haven't had the time.

            Osler had the time.

            You have that stack of journals.

            Osler read every scientific journal published in Canada while at McGill.

            There are students and residents to be taught.

            Osler taught them at the bedside, and what is more, gave them keys to his home, calling them his latchkey children.

            Perhaps you are writing a textbook, or rather editing one, as it is done today.

            Osler single-handedly wrote the standard medical textbook of his day, The Principles and Practice of Medicine.

            Osler was a genius, you say.  Yes, he was, but so are you.  Perhaps you can't teach or write as well as he did, but you can read, can't you?

            The book you are holding is intended to get you to read, meant to pull you away from television, set aside that modern novel, and return to the classics as you have to admit you have always intended to do.  There are thirty books and/or authors listed here in the table of contents.  They include Osler's own personal list of those ten books of which he said in Aequanimitas:

A Liberal education may be had at a very slight cost of time and money.  Well filled though the day be with appointed tasks, to make the best possible use of your one or of your ten talents, rest not satisfied with this professional training, but try to get the education, if not of a scholar, at least of a gentleman.  Before going to sleep read for half an hour, and in the morning have a book open on your dressing table.  You will be surprised to find how much can be accomplished in the course of a year.  I have put down a list of ten books which you may make close friends.  There are many others; studied carefully in your student days these will help in the inner education of which I speak.

            Osler called this list of ten books his bed-side library for medical students.  They are presented here, slightly out of order for editorial reasons to be explained below, each introduced by a scholar who will present excerpts of the work to whet, we hope, your appetite for this inner education.  Following these ten are twenty other works selected for their accessibility, their variety, and for their adjunctive supplement to this education.

This is the first such book of its nature in that it contains excerpts from pre-1913 texts that Osler had in his library, now called the Bibliotheca Osleriana at McGill, with a catalog of his collection by the same name.  But there does exist an earlier wonderful book by Wallis and Miller, 75 Books from the Osler Library containing essays of works Osler owned, treasured, and read, and I refer you to that fine text as well.

            We start with Plutarch, one of Osler's Ten, and I admit this is a personal choice.  A print of the cover illustration of this book, a painting by Alexandre-Charles Guillemot entitled Erasistratus Discovers the Cause of Antiochus' Disease, captures a moment in medical history from about 275 BC and told centuries later in Plutarch's Lives.  Next comes Browne's Religio Medici, Osler's favorite book.  At the Osler Library are over thirty editions of this work, and they are shelved next to his ashes.  Following the remaining eight of Osler's Ten come two poets, seven consummate story-tellers, six philosophers, three dramatists, one compelling journal, and then... well, I saved the best for last...

            ...were I to ask you who might have been the greatest physician of all time, whom would you name?  Who was it who memorized his bible by the age of 14, who by 18 had read all the existing medical textbooks and began practicing medicine, who cured a king and in payment was given use of the royal library, who wrote 450 books one of which, his textbook of medicine, was used by European medical schools as the standard text for seven centuries, who first described the transit of Venus observed with the naked eye, and who proved four of Euclid's Postulates (the fifth is still unproven), whose book on tonic intervals and rhythmic patterns was a standard text on musicology, and who sought to integrate all aspects of science and religion in a grand metaphysical vision?

            Unless you are Persian, you will not know the answer to this question, and yet George Sarton, arguably the greatest historian of science who ever lived, said of Avicenna:

Were you to ask historians of medicine to name the three greatest physicians who ever lived, they would all name Avicenna and argue over the other two.

           

            A word or two about the contributors to this book:

            There are at least three card-carrying Oslerians here, one member of the Baker Street Irregulars, one Aussie whose essay on Middlemarch is simply perfect for our purpose here, one Brit, several Canadians, one bona fide philosopher (Conway) and a favorite teacher of mine, Arnold Weinstein of Brown, all of whose lectures I have attended via The Teaching Company.  One contributor, Rita Charon, earned her PhD in English after her M.D. and after beginning a job in academic medicine.  Try that on for size.  The great majority of these contributors teach and/or direct programs in medical humanities at their universities.  I am humbled by their work for this book.

            Years ago I wrote a short piece about an elderly patient who goads her physician into reading Thackeray's Vanity Fair.   A cardiologist from Colorado wrote me a letter, stating that he had shown my story to his daughter, who abruptly turned to him and said, "Well, how about it, Dad?"

            And so, I ask you, how about it?

Michael A. LaCombe, MD

Augusta, Maine