William Osler's Religion

William Osler was a man whom few have equalled in excellence as a clinician
orin the appeal of his personality to laymen and to members of his profession alike.
Doubtless these achievements can be ascribed to no single element in his environ-
ment, education, or personality. It is my purpose to present briefly information
on his religious background and opinions which
may have contributed to his
development.
Frequently, a concern to clarify one's own philosophy leads to consideration
of the philosophy of those whom one respects. In particular, the character of
Osler's religious views can be considered to have contemporary application today.
Although he was born 75 years before many of us, I believe that the succession
of influences to which he was exposed are similar to those encountered today by
those physicians reared in homes where there was exposure to doctrines of
traditional Christian religion.
One who attempts to summarize William Osler's religious views finds available
no succinct summary from his own pen, at least in regard to revealed religion.
The researcher must in a large part draw his own conclusions from biographical
information and from the writings of Osier on related subjects. Dr. Ludwig
Edelstein has written in analytical and sympathetic detail on William Osier's Phi¬
losophy.1 To Dr. Edelstein's paper I am greatly indebted for correlating much of
the material which follows. To this material I will add observations reported to me
recently by two persons who knew Osier well.
It is to be remembered that William Osier was born in a rectory in the
frontier community of Bond Head, Ontario, in 1849. His early environment was
a deeply religious one. His father was a minister of the Church of England, as
were two of his most admired teachers during his youth. His mother, a woman
of fortitude, was a believer. From his early days he was a most knowledgeable
student of the Bible, and made plans to enter the ministry. At 19, however,
he decided upon medicine. Osier graduated from McGill Medical School in 1872
and immediately spent two years in England and Europe.
During his youth and his early professional period the writings of Darwin and
Huxley had sparked wide controversy. The debate "Genesis vs. Geology" was
probably the most disturbing discussion which had intruded itself upon Western
culture during the fifteen hundred years since the spread of Christianity. Deeply
interested in the philosophy of the new science, by 1874 Osier had apparently
developed important reservations concerning the revealed religion to which he had
adhered in his youth. He was regarded by his previous mentors as an agnostic.
However, an ambivalence is suggested by the recollection by a Montreal contem¬
porary of his regular attendance at church.2
To complete the chronological framework, one may recall that Dr. Osier joined
the McGill faculty on his return from Europe in 1874. He became the first
From the Department of Medicine, The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Hospital.
Presented in part at a meeting of the Johns Hopkins Medical History Club, Sept. 19, 1960.

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 Professor of Medicine at Johns Hopkins in 1889 at the age of 39. In 1905 he
was nominated Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford University, having left
Johns Hopkins in part to escape from the professional duties which his fame as
a clinician brought to him, in part to pursue his bibliographic and literary interests
in the environs of the Bodleian Library. He remained at Oxford until his death in
1919 at the age of 70.
I have said that Osier was regarded as an agnostic by interested contemporaries
in 1874. At that time, however, he was only 25, and in his remaining 45 years there
is evidence that Osier was subject to the same variations in, and uncertainties con¬
cerning an appropriate, religious point of view that are familiar to many of us
today. Possibly to this may be ascribed his diffidence in discussng his own
religious views, despite his considerable writings on morals and ethics.
In his Ingersoll Lecture of 1904 at Harvard, Science and Immortality,3 * Osier
characterized science as "knowing nothing of an immortality of the spirit." The
scientific student "will acknowledge with gratitude and reverence the service to
humanity of the great souls who have departed this life in a sure and certain
hope—but this is all." However, a paragraph later, one reads, "The man of
science is in a sad quandary today. He cannot but feel that the emotional side to
which faith leans makes for all that is bright and joyous in life. Fed on the dry
husks of facts, the human heart has a hidden want which science cannot supply; as
a steady diet it is too strong and meaty, and hinders rather than promotes har¬
monious mental metabolism." And in closing he predicted that "the young men
in the audience . will wander through all phases to come at last, I trust, to the
.

opinion of Cicero who

.

had rather be mistaken with Plato than be in the right with

those who deny altogether the life after death; and this is my own confessio fidei."
How did Osier define God? Although he may have touched on the subject
elsewhere in his writings, in 1910 he quoted with apparent approval the Greek
philosopher Prodicus' statement, "That which benefits human life is God."4
Further evidence of the difficulty which Dr. Osier apparently encountered in
easily relating the new science to the classic religious training of his youth may
reflect itself in the philosophic point of view for which he is possibly best noted.
I am not sure that he carried out his precept of keeping the eyes directed upward
or downward and avoiding the intellectual turmoil of gazing towards the horizon.5

Indeed, his essay Science and Immortality suggests that he did his best to penetrate
the low-lying mists. However, regardless of his innermost meditations, he 6 found
useful Carlyle's comment, "Our grand business undoubtedly is not to see what lies
dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand." f He related closely to
Carlyle's statement the words from the Sermon on the Mount, "Take therefore no
thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of
itself." '6
Probably influenced by his appreciation that at least in his earlier years re¬
ligious faith had played an important part, Osier in his writings showed ample
appreciation of and tolerance for the part played by faith in the lives of others.
He called faith "the great lever of life." In his paper on The Faith That Heals,''
* The following essays by Osler to which I make reference were reprinted in 1928 in

The Student Life and Other Essays9: Science and Immortality, The Student Life, Man's
Redemption of Man, and A Way of Life. The Master Word in Medicine was reprinted in the
several editions of Osler's Aequanimitas and Other Addresses, of which the first edition ap-
peared in 1904.
\s=d\Ascribed by Edelstein 1 to Carlyle's essay Signs of the Times.

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 he relates to his own faith in man his confidence in the continuing contribution
of the medical professions to humanity. That this confidence in his profession led
him to effective action is indicated by his record as a leader in various medical
organizations.
I have been able to glean something of the outward trappings of Osier's
religious practices from my mother whose father, Robert Palmer Howard, was
Professor of Medicine at McGill when Osier was a student. My mother's per¬
sonal contacts with Dr. Osier were numerous from the 1880's through 1909. She
recalls Osier as a frequent churchgoer, attending as he did the services of the
Church of England. She also remembers seeing him saying his prayers in his
bedroom in Oxford some time before the first World War.
While one cannot guess as to how many of the 39 Articles of Religion of the
Church of England Osier subscribed, one may conclude that when he went to
church he was, at least, warmed by Jesus' example of loving concern. His agnostic
streak—I cannot be sure whether one should or should not call it his "agnostic
point of view"—did not obscure a warm charitable spirit which was clear to all
and which very likely emanated in part from his religious concepts. He wrote that
"we are not here to get all we can out of life for ourselves, but to try to make the
lives of others happier." 6
A further word as to Osier as a philosopher, a role in which he regarded
himself a tyro. Here we can consider him a modern pragmatist, the contemporary
of William James, with whom Edelstein 1 has been able to trace an interesting
liaison. Osier's answer to the question "What is Life?" was "I do not think—I
act it; the only philosophy that brings you in contact with its real values and
enables you to grasp its hidden meaning."6 One who knew him well wrote in
1953 : "His philosophy was the day's work and the Golden Rule and Terence's
T am a man; nothing human is strange to me.' $ "

We of 1960, with the turmoil of contemporary politics and its concern for
medical care fresh upon us, are interested to read Osier's comments of 1910
concerning the imminence of "a new socialism of Science," as he put it, in which
the main task of society is the care of the body and the well-being of the citizen—
a sort of new humanism. I have already mentioned his
quotation of the Greek
philosopher Prodicus, in the same vein, "That which benefits human life is God."
Simultaneously Osier warned that we must "materialize in the service of man
those eternal principles on which life rests—moral fervour,
liberty and justice."4
In 1919, in the face of the disillusionment of the World War, and with it the
death of his son Revere in Flanders, Osier's recurring vein of optimism led him
to write that a solution to the world's difficulties could be found. In relation to
Germany, he felt that "two things are clear: there must be a very different civil¬
ization or there will be no civilization at all; and the other is that neither the old
religion combined with the old learning, nor both with the new science, suffice to
save a nation bent on self-destruction." 8 One
suspects that Osier would have been
an ardent supporter, with many of us today, of the idea of a world
community
under a just law.
Observations on Osier's views were included in a letter sent to me by his
cousin, student, and great admirer, Dr. William W. Francis. Until his death in
\s=dd\From a letter to the author from William W. Francis, dated 1953.

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 1959, Dr. Francis was the librarian of the Osier Library at McGill University.
A letter from Dr. Francis was always a delight, and this was no exception :
McGill University
Montreal
As from
Osier Library
Sunday, 16 Sept., '51
Dear Palmer :
I see I'm a month later in answering your difficult question about WO's beliefs. No
doubt about his early days and early Communion every morning even during final exams,
so that I've always thought it wasn't only the ultra-busy-ness of his Montreal teaching days
that made him drop off. I never questioned him myself, even when he would poke good-
natured fun at my own High Jinks of my young days, but I've heard others try to sound
him, and get the old (whose?—18th century-?) answer, I'm of the religion of all sensible
people. And what is that ? No sensible man discusses his religion.
"Science and IMMORALITY" (as he always called it) is a favorite of mine. Did you
ever hear how he improved on that question of "One of my colleagues" at the beginning of
the 3rd paragraph ?§ "What can any doctor say about immortality, especially with his wife
and his mother-in-law in the audience?" (as they were!). I once heard, but have forgotten,
how Eliot and Popsy Welch practically tricked him into undertaking the formidable job.
It was a consummate feat (to me) of tactful tightrope-walking, as WO managed it, leav¬
ing believers their belief and doubters their doubt, and yet being patently honest. Have
you the 1928 ed. in "The Student Life and other essays" with the addition at the end of
note 12, page 143, about the Bishop? WO had written it in the margin of his copy and we
decided to incorporate it.||
Take no stock in the "slip of paper" at top of p. 290 of Mrs. Reid's "Grt. physician." If
I begged her to change it but she indignantly refused, telling me at the same time that "Sc.
and Im." was the only one of WO's works she didn't like ! This "my boy awaiting me" is
poor Aunt Grace's wishful misquotation from memory from the copy Mrs. Brewster sent
her of WO's letter to her of the end of Nov. 1919, transcribed accurately (I have the orig¬
inal) on p. 679 (vol 2) in Cushing: lines 27-9, ". the harbor is not far off it would
...

be nice to find Isaac there but who knows.

. ." Accurately, except that I see the
. .

Oxf. Press has put a u in harbour.

. . . .

Among all the Osleriana, I don't think anyone has written about his religious views..
In addition to the articles of his referred to in Camac, you should read WO's "Faith that
heals" in the Faith-healing number of the Brit. M.J., 18 June, 1910. One of his great-
nieces, Mrs. Wilkinson of Toronto, plans to write up the 4 Osier brothers and is particularly
interested in the remarkable decline of religious fervour in one generation.* It had been
the main preoccupation of all (except one) in the generation before WO. I thought I had
a copy for you (I'll send it when found) of the only passage I know of in his corre¬
spondence where he comes anywhere near letting himself go—from Egypt in 1911, gazing
and gazing at the Sphynx in twilight and wondering and wondering, and then suddenly
the evening star appears like a message of hope. Here (and somewhere else in print) he
writes with admiration of the Mohammedan practical religion (except as regards women!!).
In the printed passage,* he speaks of two religious ceremonies that impressed him most—

\s=s\The passage in Science and Immortality3 read: "One of my colleagues, hearing that
I was to give the lecture, said to 'What do you know about immortality? You will say
me, "

a few pleasant things, and quote the "Religio Medici," but there will be nothing certain.'
\l=atclick\This footnote to some comments of Osler's on the attitudes of moribund patients3,9
describes the dying English bishop as reproving the chaplin who was praying at his bedside,
with "Don't be a fool, H. Pass the syphon!" The reader is left to guess whether the
syphon's carbonated contents were sipped undiluted.
\s=p\Mrs. Reid10 wrote concerning Osler's final illness, occurring as it did 16 months after
his son Revere's death : "On a slip of paper was found, written during the last days of his
life, these words : 'The Harbour almost reached after a splendid voyage with such com-
"
panions all the way and my boy awaiting me.'
\s=sharp\Mrs. Wilkinson's study, Lions in the Way, was published in 1956.11
*
The Old Humanities and the New Science, p. 20.8

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 the entire congregation singing Luther's Ein'fcste Burg in the Dom at Berlin and "somatic"
ritual in the Great Mosque of Cairo.
I don't know who described WO as Christ with a sense of humor. His charity as I once
wrote, was even more all-embracing; it included besides the publicans and sinners, friends
of Jesus, also the scribes and Pharisees, the pet aversions of the Master.
To me WO was a proof of the perfectability of the race.
Love to your mother and Gwen and all yours
Bill
SE/LF!
17. IX. 51 I knew I'd find this after closing that letter, not before. WWF. I've an
uneasy feeling that the machine made me spell sphinx with a y and I didn't correct it.
Extract from letter of W. O. : Egypt, to Mrs. R. Brewster. Postmarked
"Asyut," and dated Feb. 18th, 1911. In the Osier Library.
. The Musselman at prayer is the most impressive thing I have yet seen. 'Tis the
secret of the success of the most successful religion if one judges by numbers. To see a
. .

great stalwart fellow stop his work at the call from some distant mosque and go through
the impressive ritual of his prayers, and when we read in Lane the beautiful words of that
prayer—the feeling comes of the intense realism of their faith and its magnificent tribute
to the majesty and immanence of the one God. At noon today through the glasses I watched
a man—the only living thing in sight—at the edge of the desert—it seemed the very apothesis
of worship—so simple, so fitting in its attitude and with words so appropriate to human
feelings. If the Creator is a being such as we have been brought up to believe, anxious
for praise and adoration, think of the chorus that goes up, five times a day, from the
Mohammedan world ! It is a great religion !—if only they had any idea of the position
of women!
The great pyramid came up to my expectation—top-notch, as Revere would say, and we
saw it by the full moon. What a conception of immutability these old Egyptians had! I got
a splendid answer from the Sphinx in front of whom I stood just at sunset in a splendid
glow of light. And as I sat on the sand and gazed and wondered and wondered—what do you
suppose peeped over the very tip in full radiance ? The evening star, symbol of Hope and Love !
It really startled me—but was it not a good answer to the riddle of existence? . . .

Palmer Howard Futcher, M.D.

The Johns Hopkins Hospital
Baltimore 5, Md.

REFERENCES
1. Edelstein, L.: William Osler's Philosophy, Bull. Hist. Med. 20:270, 1946.
2. Cushing, H.: The Life of Sir William Osier, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1925, Vol. 1,
p. 140.
3. Osier, W.: Science and Immortality, Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1904.
4. Osler, W.: Man's Redemption of Man, London, Constable & Co., Ltd., 1910.
5. Osler, W.: A Way of Life, London, Constable & Co., Ltd., 1913.
6. Osler, W.: The Master Word in Medicine, Baltimore, J. Murphy Co., 1903.
7. Osler, W.: The Faith That Heals, Brit. Med. J. 1:1470, 1910.
8. Osler, W.: The Old Humanities and the New Science, Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co.,
1920.
9. Osler, W.: The Student Life and Other Essays, edited by H. H. Bashford, London, Con-
stable & Co., Ltd., 1928.
10. Reid, E. G.: The Great Physician: A Short Life of Sir William Osler, New York,
Oxford University Press, 1931.
11. Wilkinson, A.: Lions in the Way: A Discursive History of the Oslers, Toronto, Brett\x=req-\
Macmillan, Ltd., 1956.

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