Excerpt from The Johns Hopkins Alumni Magazine, Vol. 9: Published in the Interest of the University and the Alumni, November, 1920-June, 1921

Osler's earliest education was acquired in the school of his native village, during which he was brought under the inspiring in¿uence of William Arthur Johnson, Priest of the Parish of Weston, Ontario, one of his three teachers to whom he dedicated his text-book, The Principles and Practice of Medicine, in 1892, the other two being James Bovell, of the Toronto School of Medicine, and of the University of Trin ity College, Toronto, and Robert Palmer Howard, Dean of the Medical Faculty and Professor of Medicine, mcgill University, Montreal, to all of whom be attributed much of his success in after life. It was to Johnson's in¿uence that he largely owed the inspiration for scientific investigation when his medical career began. AS he has told us in his address on Sir Thomas Browne, to whose writings he was devoted, it was his good fortune to come under the in¿uence of a parish priest of the Gilbert White type who followed the seasons of nature no less ardently than those of the Church, and whose excursions into science brought him into contact with physio and physicians. Father J obnson, as he was lovingly called, founder and Warden of the Trinity College School, Weston, exemplified that conjunction of medicine and divinity more common in the sixteenth than in the nine teenth century. It was through him that he made the acquaintance of Sir Thomas Browne's Religio Medici. A copy acquired then, the second book he ever bought, became the most treasured volume in his collection. The in¿uence of this book on his life was later illustrated by the numerous Copies he presented to his friends as Christmas remembrances and by the fact that before his death he possessed a copy of every edition of the work ever published, nearly seventy in number.

Later, Osler attended Trinity College School, Port Hope, subsequently entering Trinity University at Toronto. Dur ing these years at Weston and Port Hope he Obtained his early cla'ssical education, which later enabled him to acquire his intimate knowledge of the writings of the great Greek thinkers, quotations from which added so much to the inter est oi his writings, both medical and historical. After leav ing the university he, for a time, entered the Office of Dr. James Bovell, Toronto, where he initiated his medical career. Those who knew Osler intimately in his Johns Hopkins Hos pital days remember his frequent habit, while sitting at a table talking to his students, of scribbling on blotters or scraps of paper. Investigation nearly always revealed the fact that the name repeatedly written had been that of his early preceptor, James Bovell. Subsequently he entered mcgill Medical School, Montreal, where he was graduated in 1872.

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