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Historical Bibliography Updated: June 16, 2026

The old humanities and the new science. An address before the Classical Association, Oxford, May 16th, 1919.

Publication Details

London: John Murray, 1919 CE.

"Osler became a 'despairing optimist' after World War I, in which he lost his son. He closed his last public address, given in May 1919 on “The Old Humanities and the New Science,” with the hope that through the Hippocratic combination of philanthropia (love of humanity) and philotechnia (love of science and technology), humankind might somehow find the wisdom (philosophia) to survive and flourish. Those words became his valedictory, as he died later that year from complications of pneumonia" (Charles S. Bryan). American edition with an extensive introduction by Harvey Cushing, Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1920. Digital facsimile of the 1920 edition from Google Books at this link.

Thematic Classifications

Catalog MetadataReference Information
Entry Number#13372
Permanent Linkhttps://staging.historyofmedicine.com/entry/15643
Author Bio LinkWikipedia ↗
External URLthe-old-humanities-and-the-new-science-an-address-before-the-classical-association-oxford-may-16th-1919

Geographic Context

Publication place: London

Mentioned in annotation: New York; Boston