HF01-04 SIR THOMAS BROWNE, SIR WILLIAM OSLER, EARL F. NATION, AND RACISM
Bibliographic record
Abstract
You have accessJournal of UrologyHistory of Urology Forum I (HF01)1 May 2024HF01-04 SIR THOMAS BROWNE, SIR WILLIAM OSLER, EARL F. NATION, AND RACISM Michael E. Moran Michael E. MoranMichael E. Moran View All Author Informationhttps://doi.org/10.1097/01.JU.0001008828.35887.de.04AboutPDF ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints ShareFacebookLinked InTwitterEmail Abstract INTRODUCTION AND OBJECTIVE: Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682) is little regarded today except by Oslerians and fans of early English literature. Sir William Osler became acquainted with Browne early in his professional life and carried a copy of Browne's Religio Medici with him at almost all times. Osler was so taken by Browne's writings that he assiduously collected almost all editions of Browne's written works. We are interested in Browne's essay Of the Blackness of Negroes and Osler's own perceived racisms and their modern attributions, the "presentism" displayed by finding fault with deceased physicians, including two huge fans of Browne, Sir William Osler and Earl F. Nation (73rd AUA President, 1978). METHODS: A review of all aspects of Thoms Browne's writings and Osler's fixations upon collecting every known edition were pursued. The Osler Library at McGill University was most helpful to this quest. Browne's quixotic 1646 Pseudodoxia Epidemica was the source of his 10th chapter Of the Blackness of Negroes. There have been several recent attempts to portray William Osler as a racist in the past 10 years and these too were pursued. We also followed Osler's interests in everything Browne, which prompted Earl F. Nation's personal interests as well. RESULTS: The Pseudodoxia is thought to have been written in response to Francis Bacon's The Advancement of Learning of 1605. In this rather amazing treatise of Browne's, he looks into the color of African's pigmentation by all known writers up to his time. During his amazing discussion he chances upon Lamarkian evolution over 100 years prior to Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, 200 years prior Darwin's 1859 On the Origin of Species, and anticipated Gregor Mendel's 1865 inheritance (birth of genetics). Browne has never been tarred and feathered for fostering racism, but his major 20th century populist physician advocate Sir William Osler (1849-1919) for sure has, beginning in his own country, Canada. CONCLUSIONS: Browne has managed to escape recidivism on his historical piece on dark skin pigmentation and races. Osler has not fared nearly as well, though far more idolized and memorialized than Browne. One might be surprised that the attack on Osler originated from his home region of Toronto, Canada. Earl F. Nation (1910-2008) was former AUA President and a founding member of the American Osler Society would have cautiously disagreed. There is a lesson here for historical urologists, racism is a slippery slope. Source of Funding: None © 2024 by American Urological Association Education and Research, Inc.FiguresReferencesRelatedDetails Volume 211Issue 5SMay 2024Page: e280 Advertisement Copyright & Permissions© 2024 by American Urological Association Education and Research, Inc.Metrics Author Information Michael E. Moran More articles by this author Expand All Advertisement PDF downloadLoading ...
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.073 | 0.015 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".