Description:

Osler, M.D. William 1849 - 1919 William Osler writes a note in 1910 to the daughter of Dr. Horatio Storer



A single page TLS on stationery stock with the letterhead of "From the Regius Professor of Medicine, Oxford", 7" x 4.25". Typed on the recto with the date of "Sept 22nd, 10", and signed "Wm Osler" . Verso is blank. Expected center fold else near fine.

A lovely note written by William Osler to "Miss Storer" , having enclosed three letters which "may be interesting for your collection from Carnegie, Sargent & Cramer" (with the typed word "Roosevelt" crossed out and the word "& Cramer" hand written in. Osler also offered his "kindest regards to your father; it was a great pleasure to see him‰Û_"

Osler was most likely writing to the daughter of Dr. Horatio Robinson Storer, an American physician, collector, and anti-abortion activist who studied at Harvard, traveled to Europe and practiced medicine in the Boston area.

Of interest is the perhaps dichotomy between the philosophies between Osler and Storer. Storer was a very pro-life activist having started the "physicians' crusade against abortion" both in Massachusetts and nationally, when he persuaded the American Medical Association to form a Committee on Criminal Abortion. Which included the passage:

"If we have proved the existence of fetal life before quickening has taken place or can take place, and by all analogy and a close and conclusive process of induction, its commencement at the very beginning, at conception itself, we are compelled to believe unjustifiable abortion always a crime."

And then compare this philosophical belief to one of Osler's who was well known in the field of gerontology for the speech he gave when leaving Hopkins called "The Fixed Period", given on February 22, 1905, included some controversial words about old age. Osler, who had a well-developed humorous side to his character, was in his mid-fifties when he gave the speech and in it he mentioned Anthony Trollope's The Fixed Period (1882), which envisaged a college where men retired at 67 and after being given a year to settle their affairs, would be "peacefully extinguished by chloroform". He claimed that, "the effective, moving, vitalizing work of the world is done between the ages of twenty-five and forty" and it was downhill from then on. Osler's speech was covered by the popular press which headlined their reports with "Osler recommends chloroform at sixty". The concept of mandatory euthanasia for humans after a "fixed period" (often 60 years) became a recurring theme in 20th century imaginative literature.

The two physician's together must have had quite interesting, explosive conversations!

A delightful simple TNS with much said behind the words themselves!

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