Constructing history in biography: a symposium on William Osler: a life in medicine. Introduction

William Osler's medical career spanned two centuries and three nations: Canada, the United States, and Great Britain. Though not an especially noted scientist, he was an innovative teacher, a professional organizer, and mentor and colleague to many grateful--indeed, sometimes adoring--students and colleagues, some of whom became influential in the Anglo-Saxon medical world. Since his death, Osler has been the subject of an enormous body of literature, fed by numerous Osler societies throughout the world. Among these is the American Osler Society, upon whose recent review panel this symposium is based. In it, three Oslerians--Philip Teigen, Earl Nation, and Joseph Lella--use Michael Bliss's book as the starting point for reading historical themes in Osler's life from their own standpoints. Bliss responds to these views by stressing the factual underpinnings of his book and by interpreting it, the first major biography of Osler since Cushing, in the context of his other works in the history of medicine as another study of the emergence of "health care as a secular replacement for traditional religious faith in the supernatural."