Friedrich Schaudinn (1871–1906). Sein Leben und Wirken als Mikrobiologe. Eine Biographie

and his equally talented sons who became leaders of the bar, the bench, and, in the case of William, the medical community of the whole Anglo-American world. Gidney and Millar write of the enduring Ontario professional ideal as the creation of "aristocrats of intellects". A relative once described the Osler boys as "English gentlemen with American energy". For once the reviewers' cliche is true: it is impossible to do justice to Professional gentlemen in a few hundred words. Medicine is only one of the professions brilliantly examined in a formidable work of scholarship; the intricate and subtle analysis encompasses all manner of other occupations from land surveying to dentistry and public school teaching, and is particularly insightful in its discussions of lawyers and clergymen. Gidney and Millar have read very widely in Canadian and comparative sources, they write crisp, clear, academic prose, and manage to be both iconoclastic and persuasive in most of their judgments. Their book will have a major impact on writing about Ontario and Canadian society, and it should be widely read by all scholars interested in the evolution of professions. I would have liked a bit more on the military as a (declining) profession option for Ontarions, and I believe Gidney and Millar are wrong in implying that hospital practice enabled physicians to experiment on charity patients "without damage to reputations and without fear of suits for malpractice". A cheap shot that would not score in ice hockey.