The “Fixed period,” the wildfire news, and an unpublished manuscript: Osler's farewell speech revisited in geographical breadth and emotional depth

Abstract

William Osler, the founding Chair of Medicine at the Johns Hopkins College of Medicine, left for Oxford in 1905. He delivered a valedictory lecture February 1905 at Johns Hopkins in which he referred to a novel by Anthony Trollope called The Fixed Period. Osler stated that almost all important work was done prior to the age of 40 and the retirement age should be 60, at least for professors. In jest, he said that perhaps men should be euthanized by chloroform at age 60, which he recalled as the plot of the novel. The so-called Fixed Period address created a media controversy with numerous articles decrying Osler. Osler's reaction to the controversy has not been commonly documented. We examined an unpublished manuscript by Osler's student Francis Packard that contributes to the knowledge of Osler's feeling about The Fixed Period address and the reaction to it. In addition, for the first time we examine the extent and geography of newspaper articles about Olser's Fixed Period address.