Osler en Italie

Osler and Italy: An intermittent love story 

Luca Borghi



Paperback: 190 pages
Publisher: Independently published (December 11, 2019)
Language: English
ISBN-13: 978-1701243002

William Osler (1849-1919) can be considered the ‘noble father’ of contemporary American medicine. As unquestioned leader of the early medical school at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, as author of one of the most appreciated and long-selling textbooks of internal medicine, The Principles and Practice of Medicine, and, through this book, the inspirer of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New York, his influence on twentieth century healthcare can hardly be exaggerated. Osler’s warm, cheerful and kind attitude towards patients and collaborators remains a role model and a source of inspiration for contemporary health professionals. Such features of his character had deep humanistic roots, through his wide and intimate knowledge of ancient and modern literature and arts. Italy and Italian culture had a prominent place in Osler’s cultural view. His interest in the history of medicine, mediated by his love for books, made him familiar with the Italian contributions to this history: “Minerva Medica – he wrote – has never had her chief temples in any one country for more than a generation or two. For a long period at the Renaissance she dwelt in Northern Italy, and from all parts of the world men flocked to Padua and to Bologna”. This book explores, for the first time, William Osler’s relationship with Italy and with Italian people - not only those in the medical field – from his early medical, scientific and literary connections with Italians to the three trips he made to the Bel Paese in the last years of his life. Even if Osler’s esteem for Italian medicine in his times was somehow ‘intermittent’, he came to appreciate Italy more and more as time gave him the opportunity to experience the country and its inhabitants directly.The many people who already love Osler will have here the opportunity to explore an almost uncharted area of his life, while people who are not so familiar with this gigantic figure of modern medicine can become better acquainted with him - in this centennial year from his death - from an unusual perspective.