Definition of Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Sr.

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).