(Slide) In the spring of 1955, Harold Metcalf, a dear friend and ministerial student at Duke University, gave me a copy of Sir William Osler, Aphorisms from His Bedside Teachings and Writings edited by William Bennett Bean from his father's notes. My friend inscribed the book in Greek with a Bible quotation, "Pray without ceasing." I have never attempted to learn Greek.
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During my physiology fellowship with Otto H. Gauer, a pioneer in aviation and space medicine, discoverer of volume receptors and inventor of the physiological micromanometers for study of the circulation, etc., Dr. Gauer often spoke of Osler, too, as did his great teachers in Germany. There was no way for me to escape Osler.
Every time I entered Osler Ward, which was the female medicine ward at Duke, I noticed the plaque, which gave a sketch of his life. Next to Osler Ward was Drake Ward, the ward for male medicine. Osler called Daniel Drake America's greatest peripatetic physician. Daniel Drake was a faculty member twice at the School of Medicine, University of Louisville where I have spent the past 33 years.
My earliest medical student impressions of Osler were recorded and still survive in poetry written in 1954 and 1955. The following was my response to my wife's gift:
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Sir William Osler's A Way of Life and Life
With A Way of Life I have been given a path to follow, And with The Life of Sir William Osler, a medical hero.
"What each day needs that shalt thou ask, Each day will set its proper task." (Goethe) To live for each day, forgetting the past, Today is the future, use it all for the best. Climb a mountain once in a while to think and see Where you have been, where you are and want to be.
Life is much too wonderful to waste on worry, And naught to gain from nicotine, alcohol and promiscuity.
