

At "the Hopkins" he was the primary architect of America's first modern medical training program, which was modeled on German teaching hospitals. In 1889, Osler moved to Baltimore to become Physician in Chief of the just-opened Johns Hopkins University Hospital and Professor of Medicine in the new medical school (which would open in 1893).
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He began taking a role as "medical statesman" in presentations to medical societies, addressing professional questions such as the standards of medical schools and women as physicians. Osler became a popular instructor at Pennsylvania, made many good friends and professional connections, and joined several local medical groups, including the College of Physicians of Philadelphia. Osler also developed a thriving consulting practice, which included several visits to the poet Walt Whitman, who lived in nearby Camden, New Jersey. Although Pennsylvania did not have the clinical clerkship as a required part of its program, Osler and his students were able to see patients in the large Philadelphia Hospital complex and several specialty institutions.

There he was responsible for clinical lectures, ward rounds, and autopsies. In 1884, Osler accepted the chair of Clinical Medicine at the venerable University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, attracted by the broader clinical opportunities in Philadelphia. By the 1880s, with a hospital practice and his pathological studies, Osler had developed considerable knowledge of a wide range of diseases, and was increasingly called on as an experienced consultant. He became an attending physician at Montreal General in 1878. Osler was also the sole attending physician to a temporary smallpox ward at Montreal General, and taught pathology for the Montreal Veterinary College for several years. He rapidly became one of the most popular faculty members-not just for his innovative teaching, but for his cheerful manner and enthusiasm for all aspects of medical study. He and his pathology students volunteered to do all the autopsies at Montreal General Hospital, and were soon generating careful post-mortem reports on a wide variety of cases. Before the end of his second year, he had introduced new courses in histology and pathology. Returning to Montreal in 1874, Osler accepted a post as Lecturer in "Institutes of Medicine" at McGill, and was soon promoted to professor. Osler's parents were well-educated, hardworking, and devout, yet loving and playful with their children. In 1857, when Willie was eight years old, his father requested a transfer, and was given the rectorship of Dundas, west of Toronto. He and his wife, along with the older children, also tended a small farm attached to the parsonage. Besides his church at Bond Head, the Reverend took care of several other small settlements, riding many miles on horseback each year.

For the first twenty years of his ministry, Reverend Osler's flock was some two thousand settlers, dispersed over about 240 square miles. "Willie" was the eighth of their nine children, and the fourth son.
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His parents, the Reverend Featherstone Lake Osler and Ellen Free Pickton Osler, were Anglican missionaries who emigrated from England in 1837. William Osler, one of the most influential and beloved physicians of all time, was born July 12, 1849, in a Canadian frontier hamlet called Bond Head, about forty miles north of Toronto.
