The other day Dr. Cheng-Hung Lin was talking about the giants in surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital, I took out several of my books about JHH. How can one talk about JHH without thinking about Dr. William Osler? So I read Sir Osler’s Aequanimitas again.
Aequanimitas is Latin for equanimity (平靜, 泰然處之). The book is a collection of Osler’s addresses to the medical professionals and Aequanimitas is the first one; it was delivered as a valedictory address (known as Commencement Speech nowadays) at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in 1889. (Osler was in U. Penn before moving to Baltimore). He advocated doctors to have a quality of “imperturbability” and a measure of “insensitivity”.
It is difficult to interpret his address without actually reading it. He basically wanted doctors to keep an outward calmness in facing challenging situation and to maintain a certain distance from their patients or “detachment” so to speak.
The word of “Aequanimitas” is now emblazoned on the shield of The Johns Hopkins Department of Medicine.
We had a good fortune to become a neighbor of Dr. and Mrs. D.P. Greenlee at the end of 1976. After learning that Dr. William Osler was my hero, (so was his, too); Dr. Greenlee gave me this book as a birthday gift. Inside the front cover of the book is Dr. Greenlee’s inscription and autograph (see photo below),
“Nov. 29, 1982
To my good friend. Dr. Yuan Tsai
A belated Birthday gift.
D.P. Greenlee”
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