and with the head erect, than to crouch at their approach. And, if the fight is for principle and justice, even when failure seems certain, where many have failed before, cling to the ideal, and like child Roland, before the dark tower set the slughorn to your lips, blow the challenge, and calmly await the conflict... It has been said that, 'In patience ye shall win your souls,' and what is this patience but equanimity which enables you to rise superior to the trials of life?"
Osler then spoke several minutes about national colleagues and friends who had died, and he continued, "While preaching to you a doctrine of equanimity, I am, myself, a castaway. Recking not my own ride, I illustrate the inconsistency which so readily besets us. One might have thought that in the premier school of America, in this civitas Hippocratiea, with associations so dear to a lover of his profession, with colleagues so distinguished, and with students so considerate, one might have thought, I say, that the Hercules Pillars of a man's ambition had here been reached. But it has not been so ordained, and today I sever my connection with this University (Pennsylvania)... Gentlemen, farewell, and take with you into the struggle the watchword of the good old Roman--Aequanimitas.
Man's Redemption of Man
Man's Redemption of Man, a presidential address to the Association for the Prevention of Consumption and Other Forms of Tuberculosis, was delivered at the University of Edinburgh in 1910 in the course of a memorial service for Robert Koch, discoverer of the tubercule bacillus. This address showed Osler in a happy vein, promoting the accomplishments of public health and medicine. He spoke with the religiosity of a minister who was not ordained but who lived in the tradition of the priesthood of all believers. It began: "To man there has been published a triple
