Osler's lost thesis

William Osler's thesis was undertaken in 1871 to fulfil the graduation requirements of the McGill Faculty of Medicine. The thesis was based upon 20 autopsies and the preparation of gross and microscopic specimens. To the despair of historians, only a portion, the Introduction, was thought to have survived and part of which appeared in Cushing's biography. In the Osler Library is the final version of the Introduction together with parts of newly found earlier drafts and several incomplete autopsy reports and commentaries from the body of the thesis. Osler's early literary and classical erudition is clearly seen, and his philosophy of pathology as the foundation of clinical medicine strongly expressed. In addition, from a fragment of commentary on one of the postmortems, a venture into parasitology is seen representing what appears to be the first identification of the beef tapeworm in Canada.