Osler Stethoscope

A Knight's Stethoscope with Ware's bell, circa 1870s, that belonged to Sir William Osler while he was a student and later a faculty member at the McGill School of Medicine. Dr. Osler's stethoscope was obtained from his grandniece, Marian Grace Francis, who found it among Dr. Osler’s dissecting equipment in the Francis household. Marian Grace was the daughter of William Willoughby Francis, the son of Osler's cousin Marian Osler Francis. The Francis household was a home away from home for Dr. Osler while he was at McGill and he was very close to her children and especially to his godson, William, who was most often referred to as his nephew. William W. Francis was the cataloger of the Osler library and the first librarian of the Osler Library at McGill. This stethoscope is rare in and of itself because of the Ware's bell, not to mention the provenance through the Francis family to one of medicine's most revered physicians, Sir William Osler. The photo of Dr. Osler was taken in 1902 during his tenure as professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins. It is signed "Sincerely yours, Wm Osler." Dr. Osler was an ardent "student" of pathology in the great tradition of Laennec and others who applied their post-mortem findings to better understand the pathophysiology of disease. Thus Dr. Osler's grandniece finding his stethoscope among his pathologic dissecting equipment is not surprising.