Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Sr.

(1809-1894).

Celebrated American physician and professor of medicine (anatomy and physiology) at Harvard, and of novels, verse, and essays, including medical essays.

In one of them, Holmes wrote: 'If every drug from the vegetable, animal, and mineral kingdom were to disappear from the market, a body of enlightened men, organized as a distinct profession, would be required just as much as now, whose province should be to guard against the causes of disease, to eliminate them if possible when still present.

And to give those predictions of the course of disease which only experience can warrant.' (Currents and Counter-currents in Medical Science, 1860)