by Daniel Sokol
In a BMJ article of 19 August 2025, Dr Helen Salisbury wrote: ‘I hesitate to quote Osler given his views on race, but he was right about this.’ The next day, Dr Ikenna Ogbu, a GP, wrote in a Rapid Response: ‘I must admit that I also feel guilty agreeing with Osler, but we would be wilfully blind not to acknowledge the truth when it stares us in the face.’
Few of us hesitate to quote Aristotle, whose works contain objectionable ideas about women and slavery, or Plato, who in the Republic envisaged selective mating by the ruling class to produce ‘better’ offspring (i.e., eugenic breeding). Churchill, Darwin, and Gandhi also expressed views that jar with modern sensibilities. Why, then, should we have qualms about quoting Osler?
Judging historical figures by the moral standards of our time is to commit the fallacy of presentism. It is an easy trap that usually fills us with a sense of superiority. In an essay on his 17th century hero Sir Thomas Browne, who believed in witches, Osler wrote that ‘a man must be judged by his times and his surroundings’. Once we sharpen our moral sensitivities, the failings of the past appear glaring, and those who fall short of our expectations are deemed immoral. Reading Osler through this lens misrepresents both the man and his era.
Of course, some views, even if held in the past, were objectionable then and remain indefensible today. However, fairness demands that the gravity of the transgression be assessed in the context in which it was made before passing judgement.
The evidence of Osler’s racism is meagre. Probably the most cited fact is that, in 1912, he was listed as one of the 36 Vice-Presidents of the First International Eugenics Congress in London. A list of other Vice-Presidents of the Congress shows the names of the Regius Professor of Physick at Cambridge (Osler was Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford), the Presidents of the Royal College of Physicians, Royal College of Surgeons, and Royal Society, as well as the Lord Mayor of London and the Lord Chief Justice. Osler’s inclusion among the Vice-Presidents appears to be ceremonial. It does not equal endorsement, and we have no record of his views on the matter. There is no evidence in his writings of any support for the eugenics movement.
Another example often cited as evidence of Osler’s racism is a remark attributed to him at a dinner on 28 May 1914. This was in the context of an ongoing immigration scandal involving the ship Komagata Maru and its hundreds of Punjabi passengers seeking to immigrate to Canada. A journalist wrote that Osler said:
We ought, if we could, say to them, “Come on in, you are welcome.” But we have to safeguard our country. Therefore, we shall be bound to say, “We are sorry, we would if we could, but you cannot come in on equal terms with Europeans.” We are bound to make our country a white man’s country.
If correctly quoted by the journalist, Osler’s view was mainstream and reflected Canada’s immigration policy at the time, which restricted non-European immigration, partly out of fear of cheap labour threatening the jobs of white workers. A few days earlier, Sir Richard McBride, the Premier of British Columbia, had spoken of preserving Canada as a ‘white man’s country.’
In the thousands of pages of Osler’s writings and correspondence, the strongest evidence of racial prejudice appears in a personal letter to a fellow physician, Henry Ogden, in which Osler wrote ‘I cannot make up my mind about the Pan-American. I hate Latin Americans’. Latin Americans range from Argentinians to Puerto Ricans and span a multitude of ethnic groups. However, we know little about the context of this remark, which appears among details of family travel plans, and whether it was made in jest or seriously.
All this evidence hardly amounts to a body of racist thought, and with an accusation so serious the standard of proof should be high.
There is also evidence in Osler’s writings of the opposite. In his address to the British Medical Association in 1897, he said ‘Distinctions of race, nationality, colour, and creed are unknown within the portals of the temple of Aesculapius.’ [the Greek god of medicine and healing]. In 1902, speaking this time to the Canadian Medical Association, he said ‘Nationalism has been the great curse of humanity. In no other shape has the Demon of Ignorance assumed more hideous proportions’.
The Canadian historian, Professor Michael Bliss (author of the definitive modern biography William Osler: A Life in Medicine) concluded that there is no convincing evidence that Osler was racist.
In preparing this article, I approached Professor Charles Bryan, the editor of a 970-page encyclopedia on Osler and the author of several articles on Osler’s alleged racism, for comment. Bryan observed that Osler’s unusually well-documented life was marked by a lifelong commitment to kindness and tolerance of others’ shortcomings. He did not believe that the few instances of bias in the Oslerian corpus reflect a racist disposition. (personal communication, 29 September 2025).
Osler was a man of his time, shaped by late-Victorian and Edwardian sensibilities that now strike us as antiquated. However, it is unfair to accuse him of racism on relatively flimsy evidence, especially as he is not here to defend himself. If our writings, correspondence, comments, and associations were subject to the same intense scrutiny as Osler’s, few of us would emerge untainted by allegations of prejudice. Some of those allegations, based on false inferences or a stray, decontextualised remark to a friend, would almost certainly be wrong.
There is a practical cost to disregarding Osler. He remains one of the most insightful medical writers of the modern age. His reflections on the art of medicine, on caring for the patient as a fellow human being in need, on the balance between science and humanity, continue to inspire generations of doctors. Depriving ourselves of his wisdom because of a doubtful allegation of racism would be to throw away a rich inheritance. Medicine would be much the poorer without him.
Author: Daniel Sokol
Affiliation: 12 King’s Bench Walk
Conflict of Interest: Immediate Past President, Osler Club of London, and author of ‘From Error to Ethics: Five Essential Lessons from Teaching Clinicians in Trouble, with inspirational quotes from Sir William Osler’ [2025]