Medical Pioneer. A physician and educator who famously said "Listen to your patient, he is telling you the diagnosis", he has been called "the father of modern medicine". Raised in what was then West Canada, Dr. Osler originally intended to follow his father into the Anglican ministry and enrolled at Trinity College, Toronto, but a short time later transferred to the Trinity School of Medicine and thence to Montreal's McGill University, where he received his M.D. in 1872. Desiring to become an ophthalmologist, he was hindered by the then poor state of post-graduate medical education; he traveled in London, Berlin, and Vienna for two years then returned to the family home in Dundas, Ontario, where he worked briefly before accepting a position at McGill. His professional prestige rose rapidly as he taught at the medical school, worked as a pathologist in a smallpox hospital, and published extensively. An incurable prankster, he even published 1884 articles in the "Philadelphia Medical News" as 'Dr. Egerton Yorrick Davis', allegedly a retired Army doctor living in the back country but in fact a complete fabrication whose 'writings' were obvious spoofs. Though Dr. Davis 'died' in 1884, Dr. Osler occasionally used his name when registering at conferences and hotels, while in an unfortunate side effect the "Philadelphia Medical News" thereafter refused to publish him even after he gained world renown. Dr. Osler served as professor at the University of Pennsylvania from 1884 to 1888, then became physician-in-chief at the then new Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore where he was one of the four founders, along with Drs. Welch, Halsted, and Kelly, of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. It was there that he revolutionized medical education, innaugurating "hands-on" training for students, inventing the modern post-graduate residency system, and developing the first adequate medical libraries. In 1892 he published "The Principles and Practice of Medicine", the first modern textbook of internal medicine, which has been extensively translated, repeatedly revised, and remained in print as late as 2001. In 1905, Dr. Osler accepted the position of Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford, where he continued to write and teach for the rest of his life. His 1905 speech "The Fixed Period", in which he advocated universal euthanasia at 68, caused controversy until the public realized that it was a joke devised by the doctor's well-known sense of humour. Today, the bibliography of his published works runs to over 1,500 entries, numerous schools, libraries, and hospitals on both sides of the Atlantic carry his name, and several "Osler" medical eponyms remain in use. Dr. Osler served on the board of Oxford's Bodleian Library, was created a Baronet and Knighted in 1911, lost his only surviving son in World War I, a fact that led to profound guilt as he had used his influence to obtain for him a commission, and died in the flu epidemic of 1919; his story is well-told in Dr. Harvey Cushing's 1925 Pulitzer Prize-winning biography. His papers and personal library are preserved at McGill University. The doctor once stated that "the best way to live a long life is to get a chronic disease and take good care of it", while of his approach to medical education he said: "He who studies medicine without books sails an uncharted sea, but he who studies medicine without patients does not go to sea at all".