The Osler Collection

Sir William Osler, translated by Philip B. Cousland, The principles and practice of medicine, 1909-1910

Drawn from the fifth and sixth English editions, this translation of Osler’s textbook by medical missionary Dr. Philip B. Cousland (1861-1930) is the first issue of the first Chinese edition; copies of a second (1921) and third (1925) edition are also in the Osler Collection. In his preface, Cousland states that, “Diseases rare or unknown in China have been dealt with somewhat tersely, while others have been taken in whole or in part from Sir Patrick Manson’s Tropical diseases. The geographical distribution and incidence in China have been given as far as could be ascertained…. Such matter as is only appropriate to the West has been omitted…. The Publication Committee is under special obligation to Prof. Osler for his hearty concurrence in this endeavor to give his book to the Chinese in their own language.”

Luther Vose Bell, An attempt to investigate some obscure and undecided doctrines in relation to small-pox, varioloid and vaccination, 1836

The endpapers of this short work on smallpox vaccination contain a bookplate of Dr. Addison Marshall Clark (1857-1919), an Ohio surgeon, along with an 1894 inscription from Dr. Howard A. Kelly (1853-1943), presenting it to William Osler as “a small addition to your Americana.” It was then given by Osler to Joseph Hersey Pratt in 1905 who intended to give it to the Osler Library at McGill University in 1930 but then also presented it to Dr. Conrad Wesselhoeft of Boston, in 1943, before its donation to the Boston Medical Library.