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

Please Join Us on June 3, 2024

On Monday, June 3, 1799, in accordance with the organization's charter, the 101 Founders of the Medical & Chirurgical Faculty of the State of Maryland gathered for their first meeting.

On Monday, June 3, 2024, exactly 225 years later, members and friends of the Faculty, or MedChi as it's now known, will be gathering to celebrate our Founders, and all that we've accomplished over the past two and a quarter centuries.

Please join us for the anniversary of our first meeting, and the opening of Phase III of the MedChi Museum of Maryland Medical History. 

The event is free, but reservations are required! Please RSVP HERE  by May 29th. 

Here are some additional details:

• There is free on-site parking at 1204 Maryland Avenue, but I am sure that will fill up quickly.
• There is also free parking at the Greek Church’s lot at the north-east corner of Maryland Avenue and Preston Street. We will send parking passes as we get closer to the event.
• There is paid parking just across from our 1204 parking lot.
• Additionally, there is public transportation that comes with a block or two of our offices.
• The dress for the event is business casual.
• There will be tours of the MedChi Museum and building during the evening.
• Beer, wine, and a specialty cocktail will be served along with a selection of hors d’oeuvres.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me at this email address. 

Local Parking Map

Echoes From the Past

A few weeks ago, MedChi hosted a practice session for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's Youth Orchestra. During their practice time, I usually do some work in the Rare Books Room, so I can be close by if there are any questions. 

The children that afternoon ranged from eight to twelve years old, and made up the two violin sections which were practicing. As I sat in the Rare Books Room, the sounds of their music came drifting down the marble staircase. It was perfection.

I was mostly looking for illustrations and engravings from older books that we can somehow use in our work. One of the things that I found really charming in the books was the shadows of the images on one page on the opposite page. A lot of old books with illustrations like this have a piece of tissue paper between the image and the page to prevent the shadowing.

Another thing that never ceases to amaze me is the detail in the images in these books, which were mostly printed in the 1800s. I think about the person engraving the prints, and how much talent they must have had. You can just barely see a shadow of something like a deer that has come from the opposite page.

Not only were they artists, they had to have a steady hand, and be able to engrave everything backwards.   

What I Found: Baron von Munchausen

About 100 years ago, we inherited an old medical case. It was rosewood with silver corner pieces and an escutcheon.

It was given to MedChi by the descendants of a young physician who had emigrated to Baltimore with his seven children.

The story is that he had received it from a grateful patient, one Baron von Munchausen, who had liberated it from Napoleon’s physician at the Battle of Waterloo.

We have all the documentation about the family donating the “Napoleon Chest” to us, but when we investigated the rest of the story, things weren’t quite as clear.

The Battle of Waterloo was in 1817, and Baron von Munchausen lived in the early 1700s. He was a fantasist who was renowned for making up incredible stories.

Oddly enough, as I was going through some books here at the office, I stumbled upon a copy of “Baron Munchausen Illustrated.” This is possibly a second edition of the book from around the mid-1780s. The book about a fictionalized character named after a real person. 

The author, a German writer, scientist and con artist, Rudolf Erich Raspe, probably met the real Baron at the University of Göttingen. Raspe’s career mixed writing and scientific scholarship with theft and swindling.

Regardless of that, Raspe was a prolific writer, with at least eight different books about the Baron. The book I found has the most charming illustrations, which help tell the crazy stories, such as flying on a cannonball after a battle,

and riding a seahorse under the ocean.

The books are all written as if Baron von Munchausen himself was the narrator. In addition to the books, some of which are still being published, there are a number of movies which have been made of these stories, the most recent of which was in 2012 by Terry Gilliam.

Here are some additional illustrations. 

If you are in the area, please get in touch with me and I’d be happy to show you our Napoleon Chest and the rest of our Museum of Medical History.  

Dinner and a Show at the BSO!

Just a reminder that Dinner & a Show is coming up on
Saturday, April 13!

If you are a MedChi Member or Guest, 
please click HERE for tickets.

If you are a student or a resident, 
please click HERE for tickets.

For questions, please email events@medchi.org

Suffrage at MedChi

The Medical & Chirurgical Faculty of Maryland building (including Osler Hall), now known as MedChi, at 1211 Cathedral Street in Baltimore was last surveyed by the Maryland Historic Trust in 1975. That survey only included a description of the west façade. This report was completed in 2020 as part of a project to document sites associated with the Woman's Suffrage Movement in Maryland.

Undoubtedly, Marcia Crocker Noyes, the librarian at MedChi was interested in and involved with the suffrage movement. She was an independent, intelligent woman, who by the mid-1910s, owned and drove her own car, and ran a large organization on her own.

The quest for women's suffrage represents over 70 years of activism that ultimately resulted in the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, which granted women the right to vote, on August 18, 1920. The movement relied on a complicated grassroots network of affiliated national, state, and local organizations that were often fraught with divisions over race, strategy, and tactics. These organizations were predominantly comprised of white upper- and middle-class women, although some efforts were made to engage poorer women. Black women were excluded, but formed their own segregated organizations, including the Progressive Women' s Suffrage Club established by Estelle Young, and advocated not only for women's suffrage but also for a host of other civil rights legislation. The movement was decidedly nonviolent and relied on the power of persuasion and education to attract people to the cause (Diehlmann* 2020).

Suffrage Meetings The Medical & Chirurgical Faculty of Maryland Building was the site of numerous meetings associated with women' s suffrage in the second decade of the twentieth century, perhaps because Elizabeth King Ellicott, a leading suffragist and president of the Equal Suffrage League (ESL), was married to William M. Ellicott whose firm designed the building. 

In addition, many leading suffragists were affiliated with Baltimore's medical community. A flurry of meetings were held in Osler Hall over winter 1910, likely to raise awareness for the controversial bill the ESL had before the Maryland General Assembly to allow for municipal suffrage in Baltimore. Judge Jacob Moses of the Juvenile Court, acting as council for the ESL, prepared the bill and Mr. Robert H. Carr agreed to further the amendment in the Legislature.

The first mass suffrage meeting hosted at Osler Hall by the ESL was on January 22, 1910, when Governor John F. Shafroth of Colorado spoke before a full house on women suffrage in Colorado since it was adopted 16 years prior. In introducing Gov. Shafroth, Gen. N. Winslow Willians, Maryland Secretary of State, noted "I think it is very appropriate that the meeting is held in this form where panaceas for all ills are discussed. You women are to cure the evils of a deficient suffrage" (The Sun, 1910b, 14).

Several days later, on January 26, 1910, Rev. Dr. Arma Howard Shaw, NAWSA president, spoke. Dr. Shaw's presence was important as she was a proponent of universal suffrage, as that was the official NAWSA platform, but she personally was supportive of municipal suffrage efforts like Ellicott's if that form of suffrage was deemed more expedient. Mrs. Ellicott presided at the meeting and Judge Moses introduced Dr. Shaw (The Sun, 1910d, 14; The Sun, 1910a, 9).

Then, on February 1, 1910, Miss Caroline Lexow, daughter of a former New York state senator and secretary of the National College Equal Suffrage League, spoke to a crowd in Osler Hall (The Sun, 1910e, 14). The last event was a lecture given by Mrs. Ellicott relating the suffrage movement to nurses during the Maryland State Association of Graduate Nurses' annual convention at MedChi on February 11, 1910 (The Sun, 1910f, 6).

Both Mrs. Ellicott and Mary E. Lent, president of the Just Government League (JGL) of Maryland, urged passage of the municipal suffrage bill. The event was clearly successful, as by the end of the evening 300 nurses signified their intention of backing the bill (The Sun, 1910g, 7). Ellicott' s bill was controversial because it competed with the Maryland Woman's Suffrage Association's (MWSA) own bill for statewide suffrage. The ESL bill would allow male or female residents of Baltimore City twenty-one years old or older to vote, but property and educational qualifications limited those who were actually enfranchised.

The ESL bill, which was accompanied by an endorsement by Baltimore City Mayor J. Barry Mahool and a petition with 173,000 signatures, was endorsed by the JGL and the Men's League for Woman Suffrage, and none of these organizations supported MWSA's statewide suffrage bill, believing that a municipal suffrage bill would be more palatable to the Maryland populace. The General Assembly was resoundingly un-supportive of both bills, postponing the municipal suffrage question indefinitely and defeating the statewide bill outright.

MWSA was already frustrated by the ESL's efforts to bypass MWSA structure and establish its own local and county leagues. The organization was further incensed at ESL's effort at establishing municipal suffrage, seeing it as divisive and unhelpful toward their larger statewide suffrage goals. Later that year, on November 29, 1910, MWSA held their annual state convention at the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty building, where the organization ejected the ESL, resulting in a loss of 600 members for MWSA. Montgomery County suffragists argued to keep the organization affiliated, fearing that Mrs. Ellicott would form a rival state organization as the ESL "has done considerable work in the counties and is well-known there" (The Sun, 1910c, 9).

Their concerns were not unwarranted as Ellicott did, in fact, create a new statewide suffrage organization, the State Equal Franchise League (EFL), leaving three statewide organizations vying for leadership of the suffrage movement. The rift appears to have been short-lived as a year later there was mention that a council may be established among the JGL, the EFL and the MWSA for the purpose of conducting the suffrage campaign harmoniously. Regardless, the three organizations remained independent and varied in their tactics, with the JGL being the most militant, MWSA as most conservative, and the EFL somewhere in between (The Sun, 1911c, 13; Son 1962, 40). MedChi was also the site of significant anti-suffrage activity. 

The Maryland Society Opposed to Woman Suffrage was organized at MedChi on February 20, 1911, under the slogan "Let women use their influence on the men to cast their ballots for clean government, and better results will be accomplished than by creating more votes" (The Sun, 1911e, 8). The organization hosted their first public meeting at MedChi on March 13, 1911.

According to newspaper accounts, "Osler Hall was thronged and an adjoining room was well filled" (The Sun, 1911f, 8). William Marbury, a noted Baltimore lawyer presided, and speakers included former US Supreme Court Justice Henry Billings Brown from Washington, DC, and Everett P. Wheeler of New York (The Sun, 1911h, 8). They hosted a second annual meeting at MedChi on Mach 4, 1912, to elect officers, including Mary Frick Garrett as president, who continued to serve in that role for many years (The Sun, 1912, 8). This was followed by a mass meeting on March 25, 1912, with Minnie Bronson of Washington, DC, and Emily Bissell of Wilmington, Delaware, where they pleaded for a larger membership (The Sun, 1912, 9).

Suffragists continued to use the facility in 1911. Dr. Arma Howard Show spoke on March 15, 1911, on "True Democracy" under the auspices of the ESL and was introduced by Dr. Eugene Nelson, president of Goucher College. Mrs. Ellicott opened the meeting, which was scheduled to offset the anti-suffrage meeting held two days earlier (The Sun, 1911d, 9). On March 28, 1911, Miss Sylvia Pankhurst gave an address before 75 people at Osler Hall under the auspices of the Baltimore Woman Suffrage Club and was the guest of Emma Maddox Funck. Ms. Pankhurst was from a family of notable English suffragists, including her mother, Emmaline, and her sister, Christabel, a lawyer who defended many suffragists who were imprisoned (The Sun, 1911a, 11).

She implored the audience of mostly young women, "We should always attack the party in power.... As long as it is in power and we have not the ballot it is our enemy" (The Sun, 1911b, 16). The JGL sponsored a mass meeting open to the public at MedChi on December 7, 1911, where Miss Beatrice Forbes-Robertson of New Yok spoke (The Sun, 1911c, 13). The JGL formed a chorus that would perform that evening, including "the Women's Marching Song," which was the battle hymn the English suffragists sang as they stormed Parliament. Before the meeting, the JGL held three open air meetings to raise awareness of the event, the first on November 29, 1911, on the Courthouse Plaza (The Sun, 1911i, 7).

The mass meeting was very successful as the JGL raised more than $2,000 that would be used in the league’s suffrage campaign. Suffrage activities continued at MedChi and Osler Hall in the following years. A second JGL mass meeting was held on January 11, 1912, with Mr. Roben Elder, assistant District Attorney of New York City (The Sun, 1911j, 13). The ESL sponsored a talk from Miss Ethel Amold of England on "The Citizenship of Women" on February 27, 1912 (The Sun, 1912a, 9). When the Army of the Hudson, a national suffrage march from New York to Washington, DC, was in Baltimore, members attended a Mental Hygiene Congress at MedChi on February 24, 1913; however, it is unclear if march leader Rosalie Jones attended (The Sun, 1913, 12). 

*This report was written by Nicole Diehlmann. She is a historian in Maryland who worked for the Maryland Historic Trust and the engineering firm, RKK.

Happy International Women's Day!

 Just another instance of women getting it done!

One of our Eastern Shore members making her house calls during the gas shortage in the 1970s.