A commentary on the last illness of Sir William Osler.

HE CLINICALNOTES that the late Dr. Thomas Archibald (Archie) Malloch recorde~ about Sir William Osler's last illness appeared in a previous Osler Library New.rletter (No. 47, October 1984), prepared 'by Harvey Blackman and Philip Teigen. When their work was in progress, they invited me to compose some comments on that illness from the point of view of an internist-cardiologist who graduated M.D. at McGill in 1920. I accepted this very interesting task and now find myself greatly indebted to them and to Dr. Faith Wallis and Meera Ashtakala of the Osler Library for much help in assembling pertinent documents and to Dr. E.H. Bensley and Professor A.E. Malloch for valuable information and constructive criticism. The Osler Library Archives do not contain a rouline, formal clinical history on Osler, such as an intern records for a patient, newly admitted to the hospital. Nor did Osler maintain a . systematic, continual private record of disturbances in his health. . Cushing assembled references to Osler's illnesses from lelters and postcards Osler wrote to friends, occasional memoranda about illness that he jotted down in his account book, correspondence. I maintained. by Lady Osler and some clinical notes made by the physicians and surgeons who attended him during the last illness. Dr. Archie Malloch's notes, published in the O.rler Library Newsletter, are the most complete for a period of twenty-five consecutive days which began on 5 December 1919 and ended on the 29th when Osler died. . When in his late forties, Osler began 10have, almost annually, 'acute bronchopulmonary illnesses which he said he enjoyed as literary holidays. However, in his later years, recovcry of his normal buoyancy began to require rather longer convalescence. When the innuenza pandeinic reached Oxford in October i918, it struck him but because of his many obligations related to the war and the great dcmands on the medical practitioners in Oxford created by the pandemic~ he soon resumed his activities including house calls for the famillcs of physicians. On 16 November 1918, W.T. Longcope visited 13Norham Gardens for the first time since 1907, Later, in 1949, he wrote of this visit: .