I was recently invited to give a talk at the Annual American Osler Society Conference in Kansas City, Missouri. Here is my lecture.
I should begin this talk by telling you that I am a 12th generation Baltimorean on my mother’s side, so of course, I am biased, and think that Baltimore is the center of the universe!
The Baltimore where Dr. William Osler landed in 1889 was a busy and active place, on the cusp, as ever, of accomplishing great things. With the bounty from the Chesapeake Bay, the fertile fields of the Eastern Shore, and the coal-mining mountains of Western Maryland, Baltimore was and is a major import/export center with goods from its factories, waters, fields, and mountains being sent world-wide, and imports coming in from around the world.
Between 1850 and 1900, Baltimore’s population doubled to more than a half-a-million residents. Baltimore was the second largest immigration point after Ellis Island. Although many immigrants continued their voyages into America’s interior, many stayed where they landed. Most were Irish, Polish, Greek, or Italian, and their descendants are still integral to Baltimore’s many and diverse neighborhoods.
The City embarked on a huge building campaign in the last 20 years of the 1800s, and the first ten years of the 1900s. New parks, schools, a new city hall (designed by a 22-year old architect) and municipal buildings were being built, and the city’s footprint expanded from ten to thirty square miles.
The Port of Baltimore is significantly farther inland than other east coast ports, so overland transport costs are significantly reduced. The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad connected Baltimore to cities and states to the west, and steamships opened Baltimore to the world. Interestingly, the B&O Railroad family circles back around in the Osler and Hopkins stories.
According to minutes from the Trustees
of Johns Hopkins on September 25, 1888, it was a done deal that Osler would be
coming to Baltimore as Chief of Medicine. The announcement caused quite a bit
of consternation along the eastern seaboard, as both Boston and Philadelphia
were interested in having Osler. Boston assumed he would, of course, go there,
and Philadelphia was shocked that he would actually leave.
It was to be another six months before he moved to Baltimore from Philadelphia, a distance of just over 100 miles. This time was filled with consultations, meetings, letters and telegrams, numerous lectures, and finally, the valedictory speech to medical graduates at Penn.Osler’s first public oratory in Baltimore was at the Medical & Chirurgical Faculty’s Annual Meeting on April 24, 1889. His topic, “License to Practice” alluded to the upcoming opening of the new medical school at Hopkins and was printed in full in the Maryland Medical Journal. It ran seven single-spaced, double-column pages!
When the Faculty was founded in 1799 (this is our 225th anniversary year), it was to prevent quacks and pretenders to the healing arts from practicing medicine. With the poor quality of medical schools, and the legislature’s refusal to set up the Board of Examiners, pretenders to the medical arts were once again practicing without oversight.
On Monday, May 7, 1889, the Johns Hopkins Hospital finally opened its doors with a reception for the public, and on the following day, it opened to physicians, medical students and others.
According to the City Directory of 1890, Osler lived at number 209 West Monument Street, just several houses west of the esteemed philanthropist and founder of Baltimore’s public library system, Enoch Pratt.
By 1892, Osler’s address is listed at Johns Hopkins Hospital where he was living while working on writing his book, along with articles for various medical journals and lectures he gave.
Unfortunately, there are no digitized city directories for the intervening years, but by 1901, Osler is listed as living at No. 1 West Franklin Street, directly across from the beautiful and classic Unitarian Church;
Osler was not just a member of the Johns Hopkins faculty, he was also active at the University of Maryland’s School of Medicine.
Among Dr. and Mrs. Osler’s closest friends in Baltimore were Dr. and Mrs. Henry Barton Jacobs.
Most interestingly, Robert’s sister, also named Mary Garrett, gave the money to Hopkins to tide it over when it had financial troubles in its early years, with the proviso that Hopkins would admit women from the start. The two Marys were on opposite sides politically, with Mary Frick Garrett being very conservative, opposing both suffrage and co-education, while Mary Elizabeth Garrett strongly supported both of these ideals.
In 1896, Osler needed a care-taker for
the nearly-dead library at the Medical & Chirurgical Faculty, where he was
now President. Of course, he was friends with bibliophile, Bernard C. Steiner,
who succeeded his father as the president of the Enoch Pratt Free Library. Mr.
Steiner recommended Marcia Crocker Noyes, a bright young woman who worked for
the library in circulation, and he knew she was up for the challenge of this
new position.
Miss Noyes and Dr. Osler became great friends, and until his death, he sent her special books for the Faculty’s library. Miss Noyes visited the Oslers several times in England, and she and Osler kept up a long, warm correspondence.
Although Osler was a homebody who preferred being with his books and his writings, he was often called on to be a guest, or a guest of honor, at black tie dinners. In Baltimore, many of these occasions were held at the prestigious, and until recently, men-only, Maryland Club, an imposing granite edifice a few blocks from Osler’s house on Franklin Street.
The Maryland Club was a frequent gathering place for the men from Hopkins because of its proximity to both the hospital and the Mount Vernon neighborhood where many of the early Hopkins physicians lived.
Luckily, there is a menu from a
specific dinner held on May 15, 1904. This menu sold at auction a few years ago
for more than $7,500++. The purpose of the dinner was for George Smith, the
publisher of the 63-volume set of biographies, to present them to Osler. Many
of the “old timers” from Hopkins attended and someone had the foresight to get
everyone to sign the menu, including the reclusive and elusive Egerton Yorick
Davis.
Osler jumped into life in Baltimore, serving on myriad committees, including one to decrease cases of typhoid and tuberculosis in Baltimore. This could have been, in part, because of his friendship with Dr. Jacobs, who, after his only patient died, became interested in caring for those with tuberculosis, and then eliminating it.
Things were coming to a head in 1904,
with Osler traveling across the country and around the world to lecture. Even
when he was at home, he was inundated with people stopping by the house calling
on him. Mrs. Osler had had enough and was worried about Osler’s health if he
didn’t slow down.
But there was one more thing that may have cemented the Oslers' decision to leave Baltimore.
In February of 1904, a massive fire ravaged Baltimore City. It started small, but fanned by brisk winter winds, it spread to the north and east of where it began. Baltimore’s fire department was not large enough to stop the flames, and they called for engines from Washington, DC, and New York, Atlantic City and Philadelphia.
It is hard to imagine the terror the family felt as they knew the fire was coming closer and closer, and getting bigger and bigger. Cushing talks about Osler arriving back in Baltimore late on the day the fire started, and briefly mentioning the fire in his journal. Of course, there were guests at both Osler’s house and at the latch-key house, and everyone gathered at the Osler’s.
By
Monday afternoon, the fire could be seen through the south-facing windows of
the house. While Osler was generally unflappable, the jingling of his
watch-chain and smoking more than his daily allocation of cigarettes, gave his
nerves away. 22
Flaming
embers were falling on nearby houses, driven by the winds, and the police came
by to tell the household to get ready to leave. The servants got a wagon, and
the family’s most precious items, especially Osler’s books, were packed in
trunks and barrels. The cooks made a final dinner of oyster stew and plenty of
coffee, and Revere was awoken and dressed. But soon after, the winds shifted,
and the fire changed direction. It eventually stopped when it couldn’t jump the
Jones Falls which divided the city into east and west segments.
However,
Johns Hopkins was not as lucky. The University owned a significant amount of
property in downtown Baltimore, inherited from the actual Johns Hopkins, and
much of it was in the “Burnt District” as it came to be known. The Hospital was
set to lose upwards of $400,000 in the money of the day, and it would be a long
time before they recovered financially.
By the time The Great Baltimore Fire was controlled, a total of more than 1,500 buildings were destroyed, and more than 1,000 were damaged. The fire consumed a total of 81 city blocks from the harbor to within several hundred yards of the Osler’s house on Franklin Street. Ironically, the engineers who rebuilt Baltimore established a club, which eventually found its home in the old Garrett-Jacobs Mansion.
In just over a year, Osler and his family had left Baltimore and moved to Oxford.
The Oslers occasionally came back to Baltimore, and when they did, there was a whirl of social events, from cocktails with the Cushings, to brandy and cigars with old friends at the Maryland Club, and elegant dinners with the Jacobs.
In 1909, the newly built Faculty Headquarters, featuring the central Osler Hall, was opened with much fanfare and celebration.
We are
honored that he considered Baltimore home, and we still see his influence and
accomplishments everywhere.
Thank you.
American Osler Society Conference
Kansas City, May 2024
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