Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (March 8, 1841 to March 6, 1935) American Jurist and Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United Stated
Submitted by Alan D. Rogol, MD, Ph.D.
Mr. Holmes was not a physician but lived during a major transition within medicine. In the mid-19th century, there was a real tension between the art and the new scientific discoveries in the practice of medicine. This concept was put into sharp focus by Mr. Holmes in an address to the Massachusetts Medical Society titled Currents and Countercurrents in Medical Science. Holmes was a strict believer in medicine as an art and stated “I firmly believe that if the whole materia medica, as used now, could be sunk to the bottom of the sea, it would be all the better for mankind—and all the worse for the fishes. (Holmes OW Jr. Collected Essays, 1842–1882. Houghton Mifflin; 1891:173-208.)