The Influence of Sir Andrew Clark (1826–93) on William Osler (1849–1919)

Three lines of evidence suggest that Sir Andrew Clark had a significant influence on William Osler's postgraduate training: (1) numerous references to Clark in Osler's textbook of medicine; (2) the similarity of Clark's and Osler's aphoristic messages for students; and (3) personal encounters, including Clark's reminiscence that he ‘had striven ten years for bread, ten years for bread and butter, and twenty years for cakes and ale’. Clark's meticulous approach to clinical problems, his work ethic and his enthusiasm for bedside teaching may have fostered or reinforced these same attributes in Osler. Osler honoured Clark's memory by helping Sir John MacAlister and others realize Clark's ambition to unite various London medical societies into a single organization, which, in 1907, became the Royal Society of Medicine.