Compendium of the World’s Oslerian Society
INTRODUCTORY NOTE
The cataloguing of the Osler Society presentations had as its genesis my curiosity about the nature of the talks in the earlier years of the society. Mark Silverman, President of the American Osler Society in 2000 had also conceived of a “talk about the talks” as he cleverly put it. Mark and others have kindly provided me with the programs of the earlier years and this project has moved forward with his approval and blessing. My work was jump started by the compilation of the first seventeen years by Jack D. Key and Barbara Tarpenning. As Osler has stated “the great republic of medicine knows and has known no national boundaries” and I have chosen to include the lectures from the London, Japanese and McGill Osler Societies. In addition, Oslerian Societies once existed at Saranac Lake, NY, Los Angeles, California and at the Mayo Clinic and I have included as many of those titles as I could locate. While perhaps the librarians or true historians could have done a better job of this, I chose to assemble the data myself and even do the tedious job of typing so that I might become more intimately acquainted with the material as I compiled it. Doing so has left me well prepared to analyze the titles to look for recurrent themes and unexpected currents. While Cushing and Bliss pointed out Osler’s distaste for the telephone (and no doubt he would have abhorred the beeper), I suspect Osler would have loved to communicate by email. That being the case, please email me at “clyde.partin@emoryhealthcare.org” if you see any errors of fact, omission or commission.
Clyde Partin, MD, FACP
Emory University School of Medicine