Holmes, Oliver Wendell (1809-1894), was an American writer who won fame for his essays and poems. He was also a physician and taught at the Harvard Medical School during the years of his greatest literary success. Holmes was known for his keen mind and charming, witty literary style. His enthusiasm and humor made him popular as a teacher and public speaker. His son, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., became a famous associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.
His life.
Holmes was born on Aug. 29, 1809, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where his father was a prominent Congregationalist minister. As a youth, Holmes rebelled against the strict religious beliefs of his father. Holmes later supported liberal religious opinions in many of his speeches and writings.
In 1829, Holmes graduated from Harvard College and entered law school. But law bored him and, in 1830, he began to study medicine. He studied at the Harvard Medical School and with private physicians in Boston and Paris. While a student, Holmes wrote many poems. They included “Old Ironsides” (1830), which protested the U.S. Navy’s plan to destroy the Constitution, a historic but unseaworthy frigate. The poem helped save the ship. See Constitution [ship].
In 1836, Holmes received an M.D. degree from Harvard and became a Boston physician. He married Amelia Lee Jackson in 1840. They had two sons and a daughter.
Holmes gained recognition by writing outstanding articles on medical subjects. His most important article was called “The Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever” (1843). Puerperal fever, which once killed many women, resulted from unsanitary conditions during childbirth. Medical workers of Holmes’s time paid little attention to cleanliness. Holmes showed that physicians could help prevent the disease simply by washing their hands and putting on clean clothes before delivering babies. His publication helped save many lives. Holmes later considered it his greatest achievement.
In 1847, Holmes was appointed dean of the Harvard Medical School and professor of anatomy and physiology. He served as dean until 1853 and taught until 1882. Holmes was generally assigned the last period of the morning for his lectures because his enthusiasm and humor kept tired, hungry students interested in their work.
Holmes also became popular as a public speaker. Through the years, he wrote and recited amusing poems for many special events and presented lively lectures on literature. His warmth and sense of fun won him many friends, including several leading authors.
In 1857, Holmes helped James Russell Lowell and other writers launch a new magazine. Holmes named it The Atlantic Monthly and joined the staff as a columnist. His wise, witty column made both Holmes and The Atlantic Monthly famous. Holmes continued to write essays, fiction, and poetry until he was in his 80’s. He died on Oct. 7, 1894.
His writings.
Most of Holmes’s poems are more like popular verse than serious poetry. But many are notable for their accurate descriptions of nature or their understanding of human character. His best-known poems, in addition to “Old Ironsides,” include “The Last Leaf” (1831), “The Chambered Nautilus” (1858), “Contentment” (1858), and “The Deacon’s Masterpiece: or, The Wonderful “One-Hoss Shay'” (1858).
Holmes’s best-known book, The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table (1858), consists of his first 12 essays for The Atlantic Monthly. Each essay supposedly tells about a lively, witty conversation that takes place at the breakfast table of a boarding house. The talk actually expresses the author’s own observations and opinions on many subjects, including human nature, manners, religion, and science.
Holmes also wrote three novels—Elsie Venner (1861); The Guardian Angel (1867); and A Mortal Antipathy (1885). All three promote Holmes’s liberal religious views, but none ranks as outstanding fiction. In “Mechanism in Thought and Morals,” a lecture given in 1870, Holmes explored the subconscious mind, which he called “the underground workshop of thought.” He wrote this brilliant work more than 20 years before the great Austrian psychiatrist Sigmund Freud published his description of the subconscious.
