Contrary Origins
In 1920, Dr. Crane started the Medical Historical Society as a group for the study and sharing of medical history. This group would meet with an audience of school faculty, medical students, nursing students, and medical staff, and give presentations on their chosen topic of medical history. Many students participated in this group, delivering biographical sketches of famous physicians, for course credit. In special occurrences, the group would also host guest speakers including the 1923 Nobel Prize winners Frederick Banting and John MacLeod. Banting attended the History of Medicine meetings on several occasions.
The Osler Society was created not as an extension of the Medical Historical Society, but as a separate entity. It was designed to highlight an elite group of high achieving students in the Medical School and give them the opportunity to study medical history in a different setting. This group began calling themselves the Osler Society at the suggestion of Wray Lloyd who graduated in 1926. In some newspaper clippings from Dr. Crane’s many obituaries, it is suggested that the club originated in 1925.
This is also the recollection of Dr. Don Bates in his biography of Dr. Crane. In the Osler Society fonds, there is also a photograph of the Osler Society members listed in its charter with the date of 1926
crossed out, and “1925” re-written in what is suspected to be Dr. Crane’s handwriting.
It is difficult to establish the exact date when the Osler Society officially came into existence. The society held a meeting in Dr. Crane's office, on March 21, 1927 to decide its constitution. They also wrote to Lady Osler to request her permission to use Osler's name. Thus 1927 is often quoted, in official histories,
such as Murray Barr's history of the medical school, as the year when the Osler Society was founded. To add confusion, many photographs in Occidentalia give 1926 as the founding year. Crane had discussed the formation of a new club in the years before it formulated a constitution, after the success of the Medical Historical Society.