AOS 2026

I recently returned from the Annual American Osler Society meeting in Toronto where I presented a paper on Sir William Osler's support of the writing of the Medical Annals of Maryland, 1799-1899. 

I thought I'd share the paper with you, along with my slides.

Eugene Fauntleroy Cordell, MD:
Dr. William Osler’s Other, Other, Other Librarian

There are two librarians, well-known to Oslerians, who played important roles in Dr. Osler’s life. He hired Marcia Crocker Noyes to be librarian at the Medical & Chirurgical Faculty (the Faculty) in Baltimore in 1896. Much later, he hired his second cousin, William Willoughby Francis, who curated his medical library and wrote the Bibliotheca Osleriana. Dr. Osler played a significant role in both of their lives, and Dr. Francis and Miss Noyes remained life-long friends.

Miss Noyes was one of the founders of the Medical Library Association, she edited their Bulletin and subsequent publications, and worked at the Faculty until her death in 1946. Dr. Francis was born in Montreal in 1878, and earned his medical degree from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore in 1902. After interning at Montreal's Royal Victoria Hospital and spending some time in Europe to pursue postgraduate studies, Dr. Francis returned to Montreal where he opened a practice in 1906.

However, there was a less well-known third librarian, Dr. Eugene Fauntleroy Cordell, who was, among other roles and most importantly, the author of The Medical Annals of Maryland, 1799-1899, published in 1903.

Dr. Cordell was born 1843, in Charlestown, which was then in the state of Virginia, He was the son of Dr. L.C. Cordell. He received his M.D. in 1865 from the University of Maryland.

He was a clinical reporter at the University Hospital, then Attending Physician at the Baltimore General Dispensary. Dr. Cordell was one of the founders and a Professor of Materia Medica and Therapeutics at the Baltimore Women’s Medical College, beginning in 1882. His interest in medical education helped extend the course of study from two to three years and led to the standardization of medical schools and the organization of the Association of American Medical Colleges in 1876.

Dr. Cordell twice became Librarian of the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty, and also served the standard one-year term as President. Along with Dr. Thomas A. Ashby, Dr. Cordell was the co-editor of the Maryland Medical Journal and frequently submitted articles on a wide range of topics.

When Dr. Cordell arrived as the librarian of the Faculty in 1870, he found a collection of old books and pamphlets in great disorder and of little value. The Faculty had gone dormant during the Civil War, Maryland being a border state, and no work had been done there for nearly a decade. Dr. Cordell began to reorganize the library and increase its usefulness to the Faculty’s membership.

After a significant move into a larger building in 1895, Miss Noyes found that in the intervening decade since Dr. Cordell had moved on, the library had returned to its former state of disorganization.

Even though he was no longer the librarian, Dr. Cordell understood there was that a significant amount of the Faculty’s history tucked away in the library and the archives. Old membership applications, and membership rolls from the early decades, letters to and from the secretary of the Faculty, and so much more.

The idea of a centennial volume first arose during Dr. Osler’s Presidential speech at the April 1897 annual meeting. A large and influential committee was assembled and preliminary work began.

At the Annual Meeting in April of 1898, the centennial committee suggested that the “Medical Annals of Baltimore,” which was edited by the late Dr. John R. Quinan in 1884, be revised by Dr. Eugene Cordell, who had been appointed by the Faculty’s Executive Committee to bring the work up to date and issue it as a centennial volume of the Faculty in 1899. Dr. Quinan’s work contained a large amount of material which was a great help to Dr. Cordell and to the committee.

To manage the Annals, a sub-Committee of the Centennial was appointed, with Dr. Osler as chair and Drs. Thomas Ashby, Harry Friedenwald, Henry Hurd, and George Preston as members. An invitation was sent to membership requesting they subscribe to the Centennial Volume for $2.00. Quickly, more than 200 members responded positively, even before the work was written or published.

Throughout the centennial year of 1899, Dr. Cordell presented snippets from his Annals, which would eventually run to “a portly 889 pages.” The Annals included:

• ·     year-by-year history of the Faculty dating from Maryland’s settlement in the early 1600s;
• ·        biographies, some brief and some quite detailed, of every physician who practiced medicine in Maryland between 1799 and 1899; and
• ·        longer biographical sketches of distinguished members of the Faculty.

The work was beyond extensive. We have more than ten card file boxes, each with hundreds of postcards sent to thousands of physicians, who filled out their details and then returned the cards by mail. Some are handwritten and some typed, with information about each physician. It’s extraordinary to realize that all of this work was done without the help of Google, Newspapers.com or any digital source!

The short biographies included the physician’s name, date and place of birth, year they joined the Faculty, educational and professional accomplishments, various publications, and other relevant biographical details. If the physician was deceased, as the earliest ones were most likely to be, the date and place of the death was included.

The cards needed to be ordered, either alphabetically or chronologically, and then transcribed onto a master list, which was then put into the final manuscript. It is suspected that Miss Noyes and her staff provided a great deal of help with this, and that the work was actually completed at the Faculty’s building on Hamilton Terrace.

Dr. Cordell later said it included, “a vast body of information collected from thousands of sources and extensive correspondence.” It is, as the author intended it to be, "a volume which will be regarded as authoritative in all matters relating to the medical history of the State."

One of Dr. Cordell’s biggest regrets with the Annals was the complete and utter lack of documentation about the Faculty’s first meetings at the State House in Annapolis, Maryland. Dr. Cordell elegantly surmised how the Founders arrived at the first meeting in June of 1799.

“We may fancy the founders preparing to sit in council, grave and reverend, deliberate in act and speech, still clad in the antique style, wig, cue, frilled shirt, high-necked coat with large brass buttons, knee breeches, stockings, shoe buckles, and not least, gold-headed canes. Having alighted from coach and stage, having disembarked from vessels which lay moored in the Severn River, and having dismounted from their horses, we can imagine them assembling for the business before them.”

Dr. Cordell suggested that the Centennial Committee write something to be left in the archives to be opened at the 200th anniversary of the founding.

“To feel that we were in some degree in touch with them, and that through the long vista of years we were thinking of them and their times, would certainly have been proven an inspiring circumstance.”

Unfortunately, as far as I’ve ever seen or understood, there was no such document left by the Centennial Committee, except for the special centennial souvenir program, which includes a “brief sketch of the Faculty’s first 100 years” which runs more than 25 pages.

In Harvey Cushing’s book on Sir William Osler, several letters mention Osler’s frustration with the low number of subscriptions to the Annals. Meanwhile the book continued to grow in scale. The cost of the printing was significantly more than anticipated, and in the end, Osler made up the entire deficit of two or three thousand dollars. While there are no written records of this, and we do not have copies of the accounts from that time, Osler settling the debt is mentioned in Cushing’s book.

In 1903-04, Dr. Cordell assumed the office of President of the Faculty. In a note in 1903, Dr. Osler says that the Committee should host a reception at the Faculty Hall for Dr. Cordell as an appreciation for his centennial volume, “which by now had appeared, a somewhat overgrown and expensive child for the committee of five who had fostered it.” A reception and supper were held at the Faculty’s building.

A contemporary article about the book and the reception in the Baltimore Sun states “The work is handsomely bound. As evidence of the appreciation in which the faculty holds the work of Dr. Cordell, he was presented with a certified check.” It is not stated who the check was from. Possibly Osler?

Around the same time, Dr. Cordell was appointed as the first ever professor of the History of Medicine at the University of Maryland’s School of Medicine and got busy creating an endowment for the medical school.

Dr. Osler was one of the first to make a donation, although most other contributors were faculty or alumni of the University. During his Presidency of the Faculty and his time in Baltimore, Dr. Osler worked to alleviate the animosity between the two largest medical schools in the city.

It was Dr. Osler’s intention that Dr. Cordell would profit from the sales and royalties of the book, and he did what he could to support Dr. Cordell in myriad ways. It was always a source of great regret that the low sales of the book deprived Dr. Cordell of an adequate income for his long-time work on the volume. The book was and continues to be a monument to Dr. Cordell’s dedication to the medical profession and his unselfish devotion to historical work.

As an additional gesture of his gratitude, Dr. Osler commissioned a portrait of Dr. Cordell in 1911. The portrait was painted by Baltimore artist, Waldemar Franklin Dieterich, a second-generation portrait painter. It portrays Dr. Cordell in his academic robes with his hand on the Annals, his magnum opus. The portrait was presented at the Faculty’s annual meeting in April of 1912.

For the University of Maryland’s Centennial, Dr. Cordell researched, wrote, and published a two-volume history of the University’s School of Medicine, which was founded by members of the Medical & Chirurgical Faculty, hence, the Faculty. One volume focuses on the University’s history, influence, equipment and characteristics, and the other is solely biographical sketches of the University’s founders, benefactors, regents, faculty, and alumni.

A second and similar portrait of Dr. Cordell was commissioned by the University of Maryland School of Medicine on the occasion of their centennial in 1907, and was painted by the Baltimore artist, Irving Ward. The book in Cordell’s hand is possibly a copy of the University’s Centennial Volume.

Dr. Cordell continued to research and teach at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. After a brief illness, he died unexpectedly in August of 1913. The following year, the University, the Faculty, and friends put together a memorial fund in his name.

My sources are listed here.

Sir William Osler's Legacy at MedChi

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 20^th 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.

Osler himself was responsible for commissioning at least one painting – that of Eugene Fauntleroy Cordell, author of the Medical Annals of Maryland. Osler had been involved in this project, which was finally published in 1904. The Annals has a year-by-year accounting of highs and lows at the Faculty, as well as biographies of every physician who practiced in Maryland during our first century. The painting was a thank you for Cordell’s extensive (pre-Google) research efforts.

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 225^th 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.

Diploma Signed by Benjamin Rush Auctioned

A few weeks ago, I spotted an interesting item at a local auction. It was a medical school diploma signed by Benjamin Rush (1745-1813), who was, in addition to being a signer of the Declaration of Independence, a medical pioneer.

Benjamin Rush by Charles Wilson Peale

After graduating from what is now Princeton University at age 14, Rush was also a physician, politician, civic leader in Philadelphia, social reformer, educator, and founder of Dickenson College in Pennsylvania. One of his greatest contributions to medicine was the establishment of a public dispensary, or clinic for low-income patients. 

Dr. Rush is mentioned several times in the Annals of Maryland Medicine, published in 1899 by Eugene Cordell, and trained a number of physicians who practiced in Maryland. 

This is the diploma, which was issued to someone named Benjamin Sedwick from the Philadelphia Medical Society in 1806. 

This is the description from the auction catalogue:

Description

Benjamin Rush (1745-1813, Signer of Declaration of Independence, medical pioneer and polymath) Part-printed certificate from the Medical Society of Philadelphia, February 12, 1806, issued to Benjamin Sedwick; on vellum, with original ribbon and wax seal (in a protective tin case), 9 1/4 x 13 1/2 in.

The certificate sold for $2,000 plus 6% tax and a 25% buyer's premium.

Osler's Baltimore - 1889 to 1905

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!

While there were other, smaller medical schools in Baltimore at the time, most were second rate, at best. The Maryland Legislature had recently rejected the establishment of a Board of Examiners which would ensure that physicians were qualified to practice medicine. 

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.

Ironically, the houses along this row, with the exception of Pratt’s, were torn down in the 1980s to make room for the Maryland Historical Society’s headquarters.

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; 

around the corner from the elegant Catholic Basilica; and just a block from the Central Branch of the Enoch Pratt Free Library.

Osler was not just a member of the Johns Hopkins faculty, he was also active at the University of Maryland’s School of Medicine.

He encouraged interchanges between the two sets of faculty members, even presenting lectures at the University and appearing at the first meeting of their History Club. He also strongly encouraged the older and younger members to gather at the Faculty, which was a “neutral ground” between Hopkins and the University of Maryland. Osler was a great proponent of inter-generational and inter-institutional learning.

Among Dr. and Mrs. Osler’s closest friends in Baltimore were Dr. and Mrs. Henry Barton Jacobs. 

Dr. Jacobs was one of the early “latch-keyers” who lived next to Osler’s house on Franklin Street. Mrs. Jacobs was the former Mary Frick Garrett, the widow of Robert Garrett, President of the powerful B&O Railroad. Dr. Jacobs’ practice consisted of a singular patient – Mr. Robert Garrett. Five years after Mr. Garrett died, in an extraordinarily low-key ceremony, Mary Garrett and Dr. Jacobs were married, perhaps taking the Osler’s wedding as their guide. 

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.

Harvey Cushing’s book states that after the dinner, a procession of guests left the club and headed towards 1 West Franklin, with barrow-loads of the books for Osler’s library. This is particularly funny when you realize that there is a steep hill going down and an equally steep hill rising between the Club and Osler’s house.

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. 

Osler and Jacobs established the National Foundation for the Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis (now the American Lung Association), and Jacobs’ wife founded a hospital for children with tuberculosis in the mountains west of Baltimore.

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. 

A few years later, the house on Franklin Street was demolished for a high-rise apartment. Members of the Faculty broke into the demolition site and took beams which were later made into gavels for each of the state medical societies, long-time members of the Faculty, and other friends.

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. 

Osler had advocated for this new building for years and wanted it to include an extensive medical stacks library and a cozy reading room. He gave a brief thank you speech at the opening, and then attended a grand dinner in the evening. During the remainder of this trip to Baltimore and the States, he was lavishly entertained by old friends and colleagues.

Although Osler was only in Baltimore for 16 years, it was the longest he stayed anywhere and seemed to be happy living in the city.

We are honored that he considered Baltimore home, and we still see his influence and accomplishments everywhere.

Thank you.

 Meg Fairfax Fielding
American Osler Society Conference
Kansas City, May 2024