Sir William Osler's fatal trip to Scotland: “Mrs M” and the University Grants Committee-Reference-Cited by-同舟云学术

Sir William Osler's fatal trip to Scotland: “Mrs M” and the University Grants Committee

Published:2021-11-06 Issue: Volume: Page:096777202110526
ISSN:0967-7720
Container-title:Journal of Medical Biography
language:en
Short-container-title:J Med Biogr

Author:

Kyle Graham¹^ORCID,Bryan Charles S¹^ORCID

Affiliation:

1. Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

Abstract

On 23 September 1919, Sir William Osler, after a telephone call from his friend Dyson Perrins, went to Glasgow where he saw a 40-year-old woman, Bethia Fulton Martin, in consultation with three local physicians. Osler called it “one of those remarkable Erythema cases (all sorts of skin lesions and three months on and off consolidation of both lower lobes).” Mrs Martin died 114 days later; her death certificate listed “angioneurotic oedema with chronic nephritis” and “tuberculous enlargement of the mediastinal lymph nodes.” Osler died 18 days before Mrs Martin of complications from a respiratory infection acquired on his way home from Scotland. We discuss factors that possibly prompted Osler to go to Scotland, including his role with the newly formed University Grants Committee, and the differential diagnosis of the case, which is mainly between systemic lupus erythematosus and Henoch-Schönlein purpura.

Publisher

SAGE Publications

Subject

History and Philosophy of Science,Medicine (miscellaneous)

Link

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/09677720211052613

Reference39 articles.

1. Cushing H. The life of Sir William Osler. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925; ii: 668.

2. Bliss M. William Osler: A Life in Medicine. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999: 467. A guinea was 21 shillings and was the usual denomination in which British professional fees were charged at the time. Osler's fee of £525 in September 1919 would have the purchasing power of £24,675, or $34,305 US, in 2021. For a discussion of Osler's fees, see the article on Osler's practice by George T. Harrell, Jr. (ref. 21). Harrell estimated Osler's income for 1919 to have been £3,650, of which £620 came from dividends and £600 from book royalties. Osler's salary was £679 in 1912, but his day book does not record a salary thereafter. Osler's day book does not list a salary for 1919. If we assume that he received a salary of £679 during 1919, and that all of the remaining income came from consulting fees, his fee for seeing Mrs Martin would have been 30 percent of his practice income for the year.

3. OBITUARY