Editing William Osler (section)

==Assessment==
[[File:William Osler photograph.jpg|thumb|right|Osler {{circa|1880}}]]
Perhaps Osler's greatest influence on medicine was to insist that students learn from seeing and talking to patients and the establishment of the [[Residency (medicine)|medical residency]]. The latter idea spread across the English-speaking world and remains in place today in most teaching hospitals. Through this system, physicians in training make up much of a teaching hospital's medical staff. The success of his residency system depended, in large part, on its pyramidal structure with many interns, fewer assistant residents and a single chief resident, who originally occupied that position for years. While at Hopkins, Osler established the full-time, sleep-in residency system whereby staff physicians lived in the administration building of the hospital. As established, the residency was open-ended, and long tenure was the rule. Physicians spent as long as seven or eight years as residents, during which time they led a restricted, almost [[monasticism|monastic]] life.

He wrote in an essay "Books and Men" that "He who studies medicine without books sails an uncharted sea, but he who studies medicine without patients does not go to sea at all."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.medicalarchives.jhmi.edu/osler/booksandmen.htm|title=Aequanimitas – Books and Men|website=www.medicalarchives.jhmi.edu}}</ref> His best-known saying was "Listen to your patient, he is telling you the diagnosis", which emphasises the importance of taking a good history.<ref name = "Tuteur" />

The contribution to medical education of which he was proudest was his idea of clinical clerkship – having third- and fourth-year students work with patients on the wards. He pioneered the practice of bedside teaching, making rounds with a handful of students, demonstrating what one student referred to as his method of "incomparably thorough physical examination." Soon after arriving in Baltimore, Osler insisted that his medical students attend at bedside early in their training. By their third year they were taking patient histories, performing physicals and doing lab tests examining secretions, blood and excreta.

[[File:Four doctors.jpg|frame|right|''The Four Doctors'' by [[John Singer Sargent]], 1905, depicts the four physicians who founded [[Johns Hopkins Hospital]]. The original hangs in the William H. Welch Medical Library of [[Johns Hopkins University]].<br/>From left to right: [[William H. Welch|William Henry Welch]], [[William Stewart Halsted]], William Osler, [[Howard Atwood Kelly|Howard Kelly]]]]

He reduced the role of [[Didacticism|didactic]] lectures and once said he hoped his tombstone would say only, "He brought medical students into the wards for bedside teaching." He also said, "I desire no other epitaph … than the statement that I taught medical students in the wards, as I regard this as by far the most useful and important work I have been called upon to do."  Osler fundamentally changed medical teaching in North America, and this influence, helped by a few such as the Dutch [[internal medicine|internist]] [[P. K. Pel]], spread to medical schools across the globe.

Osler was a prolific author and a great collector of books and other material relevant to the [[history of medicine]]. He willed his library to the Faculty of Medicine of [[McGill University]] where it now forms the nucleus of McGill University's [[Osler Library of the History of Medicine]].<ref>[http://mqup.mcgill.ca/book.php?bookid=1902 Bibliotheca Osleriana]. Mqup.mcgill.ca. Retrieved on May 30, 2014.</ref> Osler was a strong supporter of libraries and served on the library committees at most of the universities at which he taught and was a member of the Board of Curators of the [[Bodleian Library]] in Oxford. He was instrumental in founding the [[Medical Library Association]] in North America, alongside employee and mentee [[Marcia Croker Noyes]],<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Smith|first=Bernie Todd|date=July 1974|title=Marcia Crocker Noyes, Medical Librarian: The Shaping of a Career *|journal=Bulletin of the Medical Library Association|volume=62|issue=3|pages=314–324|issn=0025-7338|pmc=198800|pmid=4619344}}</ref> and served as its second president from 1901 to 1904. In Britain he was the first (and only) president of the Medical Library Association of Great Britain and Ireland<ref name="Crawford04">{{cite journal |author=Crawford DS |title=The Medical Library Association of Great Britain and Ireland |journal=Health Information & Libraries Journal |volume=21 |issue=4 |pages=266–8 |date=2004 |pmid=15606885 |doi=10.1111/j.1471-1842.2004.00533.x |doi-access=free }}</ref> and also a president of the [[Bibliographical Society]] of London (1913).<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.bibsoc.org.uk/presidents.htm |title=The Bibliographical Society – Past Presidents |publisher=Bibsoc.org.uk |date=November 18, 2008 |access-date=January 24, 2011 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090804010233/http://www.bibsoc.org.uk/presidents.htm |archive-date=August 4, 2009 |df=mdy-all }}</ref>

Osler was a prolific author and public speaker and his public speaking and writing were both done in a clear, lucid style. His most famous work, ''[[The Principles and Practice of Medicine]]'' quickly became a key text to students and clinicians alike. It continued to be published in many editions until 2001 and was translated into many languages.<ref>(See Osler Library Studies in the History of Medicine vol. 8.)</ref><ref>Golden, Richard (2004) ''A History of William Osler's The Principles and Practice of Medicine''. Osler Library, McGill University. {{ISBN|0-7717-0615-4}}.</ref> It is notable in part for supporting the use of [[bloodletting]] as recently as 1923.<ref>[http://www.library.ucla.edu/specialcollections/biomedicallibrary/12193.cfm Bloodletting – UCLA Biomedical Library History and Special Collections for the Sciences] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120313034620/http://www.library.ucla.edu/specialcollections/biomedicallibrary/12193.cfm |date=March 13, 2012 }}. Library.ucla.edu. Retrieved on May 30, 2014.</ref> Though his own textbook was a major influence in medicine for many years, Osler described [[Avicenna]] as the "author of the most famous medical textbook ever written". He noted that Avicenna's ''[[Canon of Medicine]]'' remained "a medical bible for a longer time than any other work".<ref>{{cite journal|author=Journal of Perinatology |title=Access : Avicenna (AD 980 to 1037) and the care of the newborn infant and breastfeeding  |journal=Journal of Perinatology |volume=28 |issue=1 |pages=3–6 |publisher=[[Nature (journal)|Nature]]|date=September 6, 2007 |doi=10.1038/sj.jp.7211832 |pmid=17805338 |s2cid=41337692 }}</ref> Osler's essays were important guides to physicians. The title of his most famous essay, "''Aequanimitas''", espousing the importance of imperturbability, is the motto on the Osler family crest and is used on the Osler housestaff tie and scarf at Hopkins.