Pigmies stab medical hero

Vincent J. Curtis

8 Dec 22

RE: McMaster University planning to sell Osler house. Hamilton Community News.  The Hamilton Spectator 8 Dec 22.

This reeks of small-mindedness, and of cowardice.  Sir William Osler is being disgraced by nameless Mac administrators in a calculated way for reasons they won’t say.

“Those working at universities have access to books and journals, and they know how to read” is the justification.  Apparently, Osler’s offenses are too startling to be spoken for the delicate ears of today to hear, but rest assured, they’re “racist.”

Unnamed people at McMaster, who apparently couldn’t, or didn’t read, first acquired the Osler home, only to hear “public questions arising” about the father of modern medicine’s “racist” views.  And so, the great man gets cancelled, stabbed in the dark by the nameless on grounds we aren’t allowed to judge for ourselves.  The cancellation of Osler all sounds so very polite society, but is so very small-minded.

(How it follows that one must to sell Osler’s home, a century after his death, on account of his racist views escapes me.  Is Mac, or the administrators, afraid of moral taint from the great man?  Or are they afraid the moralistic machine gun will be turned on them?)

A hand not on the knife is that of Nav Persaud, Canadian Research Chair in Health Justice, University of Toronto, who owes her job to Osler.  She’s the one who, in a medical journal of all places, complained of Osler’s racist views.  Not his view on the practice of medicine.

Except her evidence is too shocking to be reported, even though they’ve been in the public record for over 100 years.  Hers is that ‘public questioning’.

And so a great man gets cancelled by small-minded, anonymous moral pigmies, of insignificant consequence to medical science compared to Osler.  We don’t get to know their names, or to evaluate their evidence and judgement for ourselves.

They have the power, and that’s that!

Mao, with this theory of the guerrilla, would be proud.  Another exemplar of western civilization and culture gets assassinated in the dark, by the nameless, and for precise reasons we cannot know.

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If I called it "dark forces" would that be a racist view of mine, or of the person imputing it?