Victorian Origins of William Osler's Philosemitism?

Featherstone Osler, an Anglican missionary to the new world of British Canada, gave the name William to his new son. He held up the new baby to the marching Protestant crowd celebrating William of Orange and his Protestant victory over Catholics at the Battle of the Boyne on July 12, 1849. Catholics in Ireland to this day still see the Orange Order marches as provocative attempts to “show who is boss,” while Protestants see any attempt to deny them the right to walk through traditional routes as a move to restrict their freedom to celebrate their Protestant identity. The question raised many times is how William Osler, given his provincial, strictly parochial Protestant background, become so ecumenical, so liberal and universal in his broadminded vision and tolerance of other religions. We know that Osler read and reread Religio Medici, written by his hero and spiritual mentor, Sir Thomas Browne, and the book was placed in his coffin. Despite prejudiced remarks against Catholics, Jews, Muslims, blacks, and women in this work, Osler seemed unaffected by this aspect of Browne. Osler had the highest regard for Browne's open-mindedness relative to his era, stating that Browne had “become denationalized so far as his human sympathies were concerned.” Browne emphasized that he had “no prejudices in religion.” He subscribed himself “a loyal son of the Church of England” and commented: Where the Scripture is silent the Church is my text; where that speaks it is but my comment. When there is a joint silence of both, I borrow not the rules of my-religion from Rome or Geneva, but from the dictates of my own reason. During his lifetime, Osler made similar remarks. In his writings and actions, Sir William Osler betrayed no evidence of antisemitism—unusual for a man of his era. Among his friends and colleagues, this tolerant trait was unique. Osler's attitude could be contrasted with that of Harvey Cushing, his friend and biographer, who in his own memoirs referred to Osler's Jewish Historical Society speech against antisemitism as “Osler's charitable comments on the Semitic Invasion of Britain.” Faith Wallis, PhD, viewed Osler's philosemitism as a function of the strong representation of Jews in his chosen profession. Wallis stated: Medicine was the centre of Osler's world; that so many Jews shared his devotion raised them in his esteem. While Browne met few Jews and said things about them that in our secular age might seem unsympathetic, Osler met many Jews and said things about them that in a modern idiom seem enlightened. Yet Osler named Browne as his mentor in tolerance—perhaps rightly so, for they shared a common liberal religious outlook. No justice is done to either Browne or Osler by weighing their words on the present-day scale of political correctness. Both were men of wisdom, but both were men of their age. … By presuming moral superiority over the dead and discounting their experience, presentism becomes itself a kind of prejudice. Presentism or not presentism, it is easily apparent in at least two of Osler's articles, “Letter from Berlin” and “Israel and Medicine,” that Osler had a marked distaste for antisemitism and strongly positive attitudes towards Jews. In both articles he spoke out vigorously against antisemitism. In 1884 Osler was on sabbatical in Germany. In a letter about this to the Canadian Medical and Surgical Journal, he discussed the antisemitism he saw in Germany. The modern “hep, hep, hep” shrieked in Berlin for some years has by no means died out, and to judge from the tone of several of the papers devoted to the Jewish question there are not wanting some who would gladly revert to the plan adopted on the Nile some thousands of years ago for solving the Malthusian problem of Semitic increase. Doubtless there were then, as now, noisy agitators—prototypes of the Parson Stocker—who clamoured for the hard laws which ultimately prevailed, and for the taskmasters whose example so many Gentile generations have willingly followed, of demanding where they safely could, bricks without straw of their Israelitish brethren. Presciently, Osler may have detected the coming catastrophe that would befall the Jews of Europe half a century later. Referring to German antisemitism, Osler said: There is not a profession which would not suffer the serious loss of many of its most brilliant ornaments and in none more so than our own. I hope to be able to get the data with reference to the exact number of professors and docents of Hebrew extraction in the German Medical Faculties. The number is very great, and of those I know their positions have been won by hard and honorable work; but I fear that, as I hear has already been the case, the present agitation will help to make the attainment of university professorships additionally difficult. One cannot but notice here, in any assembly of doctors, the strong Semitic element, at the local societies and at the German Congress of Physicians it was particularly noticeable, and the same holds good in any collection of students. All honour to them! Osler had many friendships with Jewish colleagues. Jewish mothers sought his advice about their medical student sons. They felt comfortable with him. He had a special relationship with all his students, including those who were Jewish. Interviews with the children, grandchildren, and other relatives of Osler's Jewish medical students all without exception praise his heartfelt tolerance, which was related in Baltimore family gatherings as so unusual for a Gentile. Jews placed great trust in this Gentile, not only as a mentor, but as a good friend. Osler seemed to be speaking about his own philosophy when he compared the competing influences of “Athens and Jerusalem.” Osler pointed out: Modern civilization is the outcome of these two great movements of the mind of man, who today is ruled in heart and head by Israel and by Greece. From the one [Israel] he has learned responsibility to a Supreme Being, and the love of his neighbour, in which are embraced both the Law and the Prophets. Osler grew to maturity in a land and an era when Jews were either not tolerated or openly persecuted. It was during this era that Osler worked with and trained several Jewish physicians. How much he socialized with them is unknown; however, what is documented is the great regard in which Osler held Jewish refugee pediatrician Dr. Abraham Jacobi, whom he hosted several times in his Franklin Street Baltimore home. William Osler had a justly deserved reputation for humanitarianism, liberalism, and religious tolerance. What makes these qualities so remarkable is that he lived in a time when they were not representative of the Western world—in fact, when the entire milieu immediately around him was the opposite. How he came to hold this view while many of his colleagues and proteges were clearly bigots is one of the unknowns about Osler. In fact, Drs. David B. Hogan and A. Mark Clarfield argued that Sir William Osler was not merely immune to the endemic antisemitism of his age but was positively philosemitic.

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