Page:Critical Woodcuts (1926).pdf/256

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ploitation of the ductless glands, etc. As a consequence, he has almost inevitably made the life of Osler also a history of the revolutionary progress of medical science during his time.

In justice to his performance of this immense "labor of love" one other point should be made. In his modest one-page preface he disclaims having attempted a "final portrait." He calls these records mémoires pour servir. They are extraordinarily substantial and purposeful mémoires. But, on the whole, that characterization of them is just, and more accurate than a description of the book as a brilliant biographical portrait. It is a marvelously thorough piece of spade work. Osler was an artesian well, and Dr. Cushing has dug up the well. All the materials are here and in order, and the huge gusto of a like-minded colleague will find every scrap of them precious.

It is an immense and wonderful book, and it should be made prescribed reading for all those grim, sadeyed conservative killjoys who go about denying "the dogma of progress."