OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, 1809-1894
[Illustration: OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES]
LIFE.--The year 1809 was prolific in the birth of great men, producing
Holmes, Poe, Lincoln, Tennyson, and Darwin. Holmes was descended from Anne
Bradstreet, New England's "Tenth Muse" (p. 39) His father was a
Congregational clergyman, preaching at Cambridge when Oliver was born. The
family was in comfortable circumstances, and the boy was reared in a
cultured atmosphere. In middle age Holmes wrote, "I like books,--I was born
and bred among them, and have the easy feeling, when I get into their
presence, that a stable boy has among horses."
He graduated from Harvard in the famous class of 1829, for which he
afterward wrote many anniversary poems. He went to Paris to study medicine,
a science that held his interest through life. For thirty-five years he was
professor of anatomy in the Harvard Medical School, where he was the only
member of the faculty who could at the end of the day take the class,
fagged and wearied, and by his wit, stories, and lively illustrations both
instruct and interest the students.
His announcement, "small fevers gratefully received," his humor in general,
and his poetry especially, did not aid him in securing patients.
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