Meg Fairfax Fielding has just returned from the American Osler Society's Annual Meeting, held this year in (not so) sunny Pasadena, California. Her lecture was titled Dr. William Osler's Lasting Influence on the Medical & Chirurgical Faculty of Maryland. During the Annual Meeting, Meg was elected as a Fellow of the American Osler Society.
There are three specific ways Dr. Osler influenced
MedChi which still affect our organization today:
* Providing the incentive and impetus for
the 1909 headquarters building in Baltimore
* Hiring Marcia Noyes as the librarian and
establishing a medical library
* Creating our art collection.
It was the late 1880s, and the Medical &
Chirurgical Faculty, or the Faculty, had just come off a distressing time in
its history.
Maryland
is a southern state, with the Mason-Dixon line being its northern boundary. During the Civil
War, the state was divided between the Confederates, who mainly came from the rural,
southern agrarian areas with its cash crop of tobacco, and Union sympathizers,
who were from the more northern and urban areas.
The Faculty, whose members came from every county
in the state, essentially went dark during the War. But “a little band of
members preserved the library, charter, and hall through this dark period.”
Once the War was over, and rebuilding began, the
Faculty also started to come back to life. They found a new home, unpacked crates of
books, re-convened meetings, and began publishing the bi-weekly Maryland Medical
Journal. They worked to increase the membership, although that was slow-going.
Dr. William Osler arrived
in Baltimore in 1889. But before he even moved to Baltimore, he spoke before
the Faculty at its April Annual Meeting, on the controversial topic of “A License
to Practice.” Licensing physicians was the ideal on which the Faculty was
founded.
Osler became a member of
the Faculty a year later. No one could have anticipated that the mark he left
would echo down through the years, and become an integral part of the
organization. So much of who and what MedChi is today reflects the work and
influence of Dr. Osler and is wholly integrated into our everyday life.
Since its founding, the
Faculty moved to a number of headquarters buildings. Some were too big, and
others too small. One was too noisy, and another was perched along a steep
sidewalk, which became precarious in bad weather. Sometimes, the headquarters
and library were in a member’s office, and sometimes, in the basement of the Athenaeum.
In between the moves, the Faculty rented temporary spaces around the downtown
area.
In 1895, the Faculty
purchased the building at 847 Hamilton Terrace in Baltimore, and Osler was on
the slate as the incoming President. His popularity attracted more and more
members, eventually leading to the realization that the building was not set up
for large audiences, and needed a complete renovation to make it work for the
Faculty’s needs.
At the opening of Hamilton Terrace, and in a nod
to Osler’s love of books,
Dr. James R. Chadwick of Boston, delivered the address titled “Medical
Libraries: Their Development and Use.” At the time, the Faculty’s library was
not yet one of the great ones… that was still to come.
Among Chadwick’s ideals for the growth of a
library were money, a suitable building, and the continuous service of a
librarian. Secondarily, subscriptions to a wide range of medical journals, and
a detailed card catalogue. At this point, the Faculty had none of these things,
but a permanent librarian, Miss Marcia Crocker Noyes, was waiting in the wings.
Over the next decade, Hamilton Terrace continued
to prove inadequate to serve as the headquarters, a source of frustration for
many, especially Dr. Osler. Although Osler left Baltimore in 1905, he was still
very interested in the Faculty and a new building. He made it his mission to
see it to fruition.
In 1904, a huge fire
swept through Baltimore, and destroyed most of its downtown, which may account
for the amount of time between Osler’s leaving Baltimore and the construction
of the new building. Additionally, the main requirement for any new building was
that it had to be fireproof.
Our new building also needed to have a stacks
which could hold 60,000 volumes, three meeting halls, offices for the staff and
visitors, and an apartment for Miss Noyes.
In 1908, a plot of land
was secured just a few blocks from Hamilton Terrace, and a quick walk from the
Mount Royal Train Station. Osler wrote to Miss Noyes saying how pleased he was
with the location. Architects were hired and plans were drawn up.
Ground was broken in
August of 1908.
The building was
dedicated on May 12, 1909. Osler arranged to be in Baltimore for the opening of
the building, which meant delaying the celebrations for a week, so he could
squeeze the visit into a frenetic trip to the States. He gave a lecture on “Old
and New” and reminisced about the 16 years he spent in Baltimore. Osler later
wrote to Miss Noyes that it was the greatest day in medical history in Maryland,
and that the building is “just perfect.”Note: I subsequently found out that Osler brought one of his copies of the Vesalius' Anatomy as a gift to the Faculty on the occasion of the opening of the new building.
Osler had envisioned the
new building as a neutral ground between Johns Hopkins and University of
Maryland, who rarely interacted. Centrally located between the two institutions,
the Faculty proved to be the perfect meeting place. This continued for more
than 110 years, until Covid hit, and meetings became virtual, rather than in
person.
Miss Noyes
One of the first action items Dr. Osler undertook
when he became President of the Faculty to hire a permanent librarian, which he
found in a young woman named Marcia Crocker Noyes.
She had worked at the local library
and came highly recommended by the library’s president, a friend of Osler’s.
Although she didn’t have a medical background, Dr.
Osler knew she would be a quick learner, and she proved him correct. It took a while for
the doctors to come around to a young woman running the library, but Miss Noyes
managed to charm them into doing her bidding, and they were happy to comply.
Dr. Osler and Miss Noyes, along with librarians
from Johns Hopkins and McGill Universities, established the Medical Library
Association. Miss Noyes managed a journal exchange in which medical societies
who had extra medical journals swapped them for ones they were missing.
Additionally, she organized what was essentially a nurses’ employment bureau
out of the Faculty.
In 1903, she was
appointed Executive Secretary of the Faculty because of a mandate from the AMA
stating that each medical society required an executive. She worked to increase
the membership, secure donations of books and money, and organize all the
meetings and gatherings held in the building.
But there was still the issue of the
building, which Dr. Osler kept pushing. Hamilton Terrace just wasn’t working,
and it became clearly apparent that to expand both the membership and the
library, a new building was necessary.
Miss Noyes took the lead
in this, visiting medical societies up and down the East Coast and working with
architects to create a headquarters which would be both beautiful and practical.
She had a particular interest in this project because it would also be her
home.
The Faculty, with Osler’s
assistance, both financial and personal, began acquiring collections of books.
Sometimes they were bequeathed to the Faculty by families and friends of
deceased physicians. At other times, they were secured with designated funds
set aside for book purchases or were donated by friends.
Over the years, the collection grew until at its
peak, it numbered more than 60,000 volumes, including journals from every state
medical society, as well as international and specialty societies for the
entire 20th century. The library also includes a significant number
of rare books.
The library is mostly
still intact, as are the 300 drawers of the card catalogue, some cards handwritten
by Miss Noyes.
A current project is moving the rare books
collection to a climate-controlled location in the 1909 building, and
cataloging them to ensure their continued life as an integral part of MedChi’s
history.
Art Collection
At the Centennial of the Medical Society, the
trustees decided to celebrate with a series of events, including an exhibit of portraits
of prominent physicians who had been involved with the Faculty. Dr. Osler was
active in requesting paintings from and of physicians, with the goal of
establishing a permanent collection of portraits of past presidents, well-known
physicians and benefactors, for an eventual museum.
In fact, on the original
blueprints for the 1909 building, there is a space marked for a museum on the
third floor.
Of course, there is a
portrait of Dr. Osler which holds pride of place in Osler Hall, with bronze
plaques commissioned by Dr. Henry Barton Jacobs flanking it. It was painted by
Thomas Cromwell Corner, a society painter in Baltimore. Osler was not thrilled
with the painting, and several changes were made, which he explains to Miss
Noyes in a 1908 letter. Interestingly, he also disliked the John Singer Sargent
painting of the “Big Four” at Hopkins, thinking that his skin was not the right
shade, perhaps a bit too green.
During the Centennial festivities,
the exhibition of borrowed paintings was held at McCoy Hall at Hopkins. In
searching through the catalogue of exhibits, we find there is a high
correlation between the paintings exhibited and the paintings now in our
collection of 120 portraits, as well as marble and bronze busts.
The oldest portraits are
of our founders and first presidents. But Rembrandt Peale’s beautiful
renderings of Edward Harris, Horace Hayden, and John Sloan are among the stars
of our collection.
However, not all the
portraits are of luminaries, some are near-unknowns whose families, friends or
patients wanted to commemorate them.
In addition to the
portraits, we also have a number of marble busts, some by William Rinehart,
done in Rome in the 1870s.
Recent acquisitions - and
we are still acquiring - are portraits of Tristram Thomas from two different
collections. Thomas was a Founder of the Faculty, and a highly regarded
physician from Maryland’s Eastern Shore. The two portraits are among our
smallest and our largest, the newest measuring eight feet by five-and-a-half
feet!
When we officially opened
our Museum, just a year ago, on the 225th anniversary of our
founding, the art, books, and ephemera collected over the centuries became the
structure on which everything else was based.
As my colleagues and I work in the 1909 building,
surrounded by beautiful art, and knowing that we have extensive collections
that continue to grow through the generosity of members and friends, we look
back and see the long shadow of Sir William Osler, whom we, like others,
consider our patron saint.
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