Annual Meetings
The Osler Medal
Osler Medal Recipients
For essay titles before 1975, see: Genevieve Miller, "The Missing Seal," Bulletin of the History of Medicine 50 (1976): 120-121.
1941
No award
1942
John T. Barrett (Boston University)
1943
George Edward Murphy (Pennsylvania)
1944
Willard L. Marmelzat (Tulane)
1945
No Award
1946
Peter Kellaway (McGill)
1947
Honor M. Kidd (McGill)
1948
No award
1949
Charles A. Van Arsdall, Jr. (Johns Hopkins)
1950
Thomas Franklin Williams (Harvard)
1951
Joseph A. Vasselli (Rochester)
1952
Herbert S. Klickstein (Pennsylania)
1953
Thomas Edward Moore, Jr. (Harvard)
1954
Robert J. T. Joy (Yale)
1955
E. Edward Bittar (Yale)
1956
Edward D. Coppola (Yale)
1957
Sebastian R. Italia (Yale)
1958
D. G. Lawrence (McGill)
1959
Richard L. Grant (Chicago)
1960
David Franklin Musto (U. Washington)
1961
Eugene A. Cimino (Buffalo)
1962
No award
1963
Petter D. Gibbons (Yale)
1964
Thomas W. Dow (Vermont)
1965
No award
1966
Charles Nash Swisher (McGill)
1967
Charles S. Bryan (Johns Hopkins)
1968
Andrew Rosenblatt (Einstein)
1969
Lloyd Allan Wells (Rochester)
1970
Lawrence J. Hanna (Kansas)
1971
Robert C. Powell (Duke)
1972
Theron Keu-Hing Young (McGill)
1973
Kenneth M. Flegel (McGill)
1974
David Lovejoy, Jr. (Rochester)
1975
No award
1976
Steven A. Brody (Washington University School of Medicine), The life and times of Sir Fielding Ould: Man-midwife and master physician
Honorable Mention–
Arthur Gelston (Cornell Medical College), Febre Typhus: its causes, diagnosis, and treatment during the epidemic of 1947, with a clinical analysis of 138 consecutive cases from the medical records of the New York Hospital
1977
James Allen Young (Duke University School of Medicine), Anthropometric study of human growth in nineteenth-century American medicine
Honorable Mention–
Lawrence G. Miller (Harvard University), Pain, Parturition and the Profession: Twilight Sleep in America
1978
James Tait Goodrich (Columbia University School of Medicine), Sixteenth-century anatomy and Andreas Vesalius: the contribution of Renaissance art to modern anatomical studies
1979
Sandra E. Black (University of Toronto SOM), Pseudopods and synapses: the amoebid theories of neuronal mobility and the early formulation of the synapse concept, (1884-1900)
1980
John Wright (Northwestern University), Ship fever in the steerage: medical aspects of the Irish migration
1981
Lewis P. Rubin (Yale), 'A Presumptious Provincial Genius': the life and times of Thomas Beddoes (1760-1808)
1982
Thomas Huddle (University of Illinois), The origins of the reform of American medicine
1983
No award
1984
James R. Wright, Jr. (Ohio State Medical School), The development of the frozen section technique, the evolution of surgical biopsy, and the origins of surgical pathology
1985
Joan R. Butterton (Harvard), The education, naval service, and early career of Dr. William Smellie (1697-1763)
1986
Alexander R. Miller (Mayo Medical School), On the periphery: E.L. Scott and the dicsovery of insulin
1987
David Leibowitz (New York University), Scientific failure in an age of optimism: public reaction to Robert Koch's tuberculin cure
Honorable Mentions–
David M. Bishai (University of California School of Medicine, San Diego), The history of food fortification in America
Gene Nakajima (Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine), Gertrude Stein's medical education at Johns Hopkins
1988
Francis M. Lobo (Yale University Medical School), John Haygarth, smallpox, and religious dissent in eighteenth-century England
Honorable Mention–
Jose Ignacio Choca (University of Illinois at Chicago), A mode of action: historical aspects of the receptor theory
1989
Joshua A. Beckman (New York University School of Medicine), How antisepsis arrived in the second and third divisions of Bellevue Hospital: an examination of a national transformation in practice seen at the local level
1990
Cary D. Alberstone (Albany)
Honorable Mentions–
Christopher Crenner (Harvard University)
Jason Rosenstock (Brown University)
1991
Randolph N. Whitely (Kansas)
Honorable Mention–David Branch Moody (Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine), The healing power of the Marian miracle books of Bavarian shrines, (1489-1523)
1992
Kristine Cambell (Johns Hopkins)
Honorable Mention–
Christopher Sellers (University of North Carolina School of Medicine), Crisis of legitimacy and the promise of research: workplace controversy and the emergence of modern clinical science at Harvard
1993
Chris Feudtner (Pennsylvania)
Honorable Mention–
Walton O. Schalick, III (Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine), Medicine fit for a king: doctors at the royal courts of France, 1031-1350
1994
Scott Harris Podolsky (Harvard)
Honorable Mentions–
David Shumway Jones (Harvard Medical School), The challenges of randomized surgical trials: evidence, faith, and the spread of coronary artery bypass grafting, (1967-1979)
[Thomas] Avery Gibbs (University of Oklahoma), The effects of measles upon the health of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-62
1995
Gabriella G. Gosman (Yale)
Honorable Mentions–
John T. Paige, Evolution of a role for the dental surgeon in maxillofacial trauma during the Great War
Katrina Marie Posta, The balancing act: an analysis of dual career conflicts experienced by the first women physicians to graduate from Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania
1996
Nancy Shao-Chia Chen (Washington University)
Honorable Mentions–
Anjali Saini (University of Connecticut School of Medicine), The pathology of sitala: cultural responses to smallpox in eighteenth-and nineteenth-century India
Edward A.M. Duckworth (University of South Florida School of Medicine), Striking a nerve: Descartes, Hobbes, LaMettrie, and the machinery of mind
1997
Katherine Appleton Downes (Case Western Reserve School of Medicine), Getting along smoothly: becoming a physician in a man's world--the medical education of Martha Beatrice Webb (1903-1990)
1998
Wen T. Shen (University of California, San Francisco)
Honorable Mention–
Thomas Morgan (Boston University), An economic history of physician supply in New England, 1620-1990
1999
Alisa Ann McQueen (Mt. Sinai School of Medicine), Black bodies and the white plague: medical discourses of race and tuberculosis at the turn of the century in America
Honorable Mention–
David Gerber (Cornell University Medical College), Pure and wholesome: stephen Allen, cholera, and the New York City water supply in the nineteenth century
2000
Aaron Keselheim (University of Pennsylvania)
2001
No award
2002
Shelley Day (Harvard): Fetal Surgery, Medical Ethics and Abortion Politics.
Honorable Mention–
Brian Puskas (Pennsylvania State University), Managing the Nation's Health: An Historical Analysis of U.S. Public Health Service Leadership During the 1960s and 1990s
2003
Walter N. Ingram (University of Kansas), Integrators of the University of Kansas School of Medicine: a struggle in the 1930s
Honorable Mention–
Kelly R. Brown ( University of Rochester), Trends in the admission of juveniles to insane asylums in England and Wales, 1870-1900
2004
Whitney Bryant (Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons) -- "Atoxyl and Human African Trypanosomiasis: a history of colonial chemotherapy"
Honorable Mention–
Ann Garment (New York University) – “Mortui Vivos Docent – The Dead Teach the Living: The Rise of Body Bequeathal in 20th Century America”
2005
Adam D. Lipworth (University of Pennsylvania) – “The Waksman Campaign: Dr. Selman Waksman’s Struggle to Preserve His Heroic Image Through a Bitter Credit Dispute Over Streptomycin”
2006
Jesse Waggoner (Duke Univrsity), "The Role of the Physician: Eugene Sanger and a Standard of Care at the Elmira Prison Camp"
2007
Jennifer Segal (Harvard University), "Professors of the Pelvis: Teaching Medical Students the Art and Technique of Pelvic Examination. Honorable mention to Lee McCalla Hampton (U. of North Carolina), essay on Sabin
2008
Ronald W. Alfa (Stanford University School of Medicine), “Redefining Inert: The Birth of the Placebo in American Medicine”
Honorable Mentions –
David P. Johnson (Duke University School of Medicine), “Dr. George W. Harley: A new perspective of a 20th century medical missionary’s influence on 21st century global health”
Amanda V. Thornton (Dartmouth Medical School), “Coerced Care: Thomas Thistlewood’s account of medical practice on sugar plantation slaves in colonial Jamaica, 1751-1786.”
2009
Davida Kornreich, New York University School of Medicine (class of 2011). The title of her winning essay is "A debt repaid: Draper, Nativism and Dissection in New York State".
2010
Elliot Weiss "Avoiding the Controversial: United States Physicians' Response to the Eugenic Social Policies, 1910-1940"
Honorable Mentions –
Sarah Dolgonos
&
Michael Winstead
2011
Vanessa Natalie Raabe, University of Minnesota "The Sweating Sickness: A Food-Borne Toxin?"
Honorable Mention –
Adam Mark Fowler, "'To Smile in the Face of Grim Death': Methodists and 'Good Death' in the Eighteenth-Century Britain."