An exhibit at the







Jan. 10 — May 30, 1975 
                        THE HOPKINS  FOUR


William  Osier, William S. Halsted, WiUiam H.   One purpose  of this  exhibit is  to examine
Welch,  and Howard  A. Kelly are four of   these four medical figures as mortal beings.
America's  most  revered  physicians.  Their   An effort has  been made to select material
contributions  to   the   fields  of  internal   which portrays their foibles, not to ridicule or
medicine,  surgery,   pathology,   and   belittle  them, but to demonstrate their very
gynecology, as well as medical education in   human  qualities. It is  our purpose to clarify
general, have been recognized to  be of great   rather   than  blemish  the images  of Osier,
importance. Much has been written extolling   Halsted, Welch, and Kelly. With this in mind,
their virtues and contributions.                the  following  are some footnotes on  The
                                            Hopkins Four.


William S.  Halsted was addicted to morphine throughout his professional career as Professor of
Surgery at Johns Hopkins.

William Osier was an inveterate prankster whose practical jokes included the publication of
off-color fictitious case reports under a pseudonym.

Howard A. Kelly was considered a religious fanatic by  some of his medical colleagues and "a
public nuisance" by H. L. Mencken.

William H. Welch, while preaching a strictly  hygienic  life for  others,  violated all of his own
precepts in matters of eating, drinking, and smoking - and lived to the age of 84.

Dr. Kelly was a competent  and highly respected naturalist with  particular contributions in
botany  and herpetology.

The name  "The Halstedians" was proposed for an organization of physician narcotic addicts in
1957.

For a short while after Osier presented his address, "The Fixed  Period," in  1905, the term
"oslerize" was coined to signify euthanasia.

"The Hopkins Four" were  incorporated in  a popular novel entitled Miss  Susie Slagle's by
Augusta Tucker in 1939.

Dr. Halsted was a nephew (by marriage) of General Wade Hampton of Civil War fame.

Dr.  Welch on several occasions listed  the  Army Medical Library  (now  National Library of
Medicine)  and its Index-Catalogue  as  this country's most important contribution to medical
knowledge.
Dr. Halsted  was such a perfectionist that he refused the service of Baltimore establishments
and sent his fine linen shirts to Paris to be laundered. 
Halsted and  Kelly had the reputation of charging such high fees to their private patients that
their internist friends, the Hopkins Board  of Trustees, and the local practitioners were aghast.

Dr.  Welch often read sections of the Encyclopedia Britannica to develop  "instant" erudition
on the most  obscure subjects prior to a dinner party.

Dr.  Osier's therapeutic  conservatism as expressed in The Principles and Practice of Medicine
was  severely criticized by  a number of  American physicians  (Paranoia antitherapeuticum
Baltimorensis).

Dr.  Halsted's introduction of rubber gloves  into surgery was not to protect the patient from
infection but to protect the skin of his scrub  nurse and future wife.

Dr.  Welch's  80th birthday was the occasion of a worldwide celebration including an address by
the President of the United States.

Dr. Osier was the originator of the graded residency  training program as we  know it today.

Dr.  Kelly was co-author with Walter Burrage of the valuable reference  work  Dictionary of
American Medical Biography.

Dr.  Welch's  productive years in  the laboratory ended around  1900 after which he became the
apostle of scientific medicine in the  United States and spokesman  for the Hopkins plan in
medical education.

Dr.  Kelly's  early  interest and  support in  the  artist,  Max  Broedel,  set  the stage for  a
revolutionary change in medical illustration.

Dr. Osier was a vigorous opponent of the institution of full-time clinical professorships at the
Johns  Hopkins in  1914 because of his concern that it  would  lead  to a group of teachers
"cabined, cribbed, confined  within  the four walls  of a  hospital, practicing the fugitive and
cloistered virtues  of a clinical monk  - a  caste of clinical Brahmins" out of touch with the
realities of the daily practice of medicine.

Dr.  Halsted,  while generally  considered the  epitome of the straight full-time physician with
little interest in private practice,  was at  one  time  an enthusiastic supporter of private practice
for medical  school  faculty (geographic full-time)  and had a modest size but lucrative private
practice  in Baltimore prior to  1914  and the institution of straight  full-time for the clinical
professorships at Hopkins.
Cover:
John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) painted the four physicians in 1905. The painting was commissioned by Miss
Mary Garrett and was presented to the Johns Hopkins University in 1906. It now hangs in the Welch Medical
Library.

The Library extends thanks to the following organizations for their contributions:
Department of Surgery, Johns Hopkins Hospital
Enoch Pratt Free Library
Pithotomy Club, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine
Welch Medical Library, Johns Hopkins University 
U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare
             Public Health Service
           National Institutes of Health

     DHEW Publication No. (NIH) 75-789