Podolsky Scott H
Bull Hist Med. 2022;96(4):484-515. doi: 10.1353/bhm.2022.0048.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. has long been a celebrated figure at Harvard Medical School (HMS) and in the history of medicine more generally. And yet in part on account of Holmes's putative link to eugenics, but especially on account of his role as dean in the dismissal of the first three African American students at HMS in 1850, his name has recently become associated with systemic racism as well. In October 2020, the Oliver Wendell Holmes Society at HMS (one of the society "homes" to which students are assigned at admission) was renamed the William Augustus Hinton Society, in honor of the pioneering African American syphilologist. This paper examines the shifting depiction of Holmes as well as Holmes's considerations of hereditary determinism and race over the course of his long career in the nineteenth century as a test case concerning the evolving evaluation of historical figures in the history of medicine.
老奥利弗·温德尔·霍姆斯长期以来一直是哈佛医学院（HMS）以及更广泛的医学史上的著名人物。然而，部分由于霍姆斯与优生学的假定联系，尤其是由于他在1850年担任院长时将哈佛医学院的首批三名非裔美国学生开除，他的名字最近也与系统性种族主义联系在一起。2020年10月，哈佛医学院的奥利弗·温德尔·霍姆斯协会（学生入学时被分配到的协会“之家”之一）更名为威廉·奥古斯塔斯·欣顿协会，以纪念开创性的非裔美国梅毒学家。本文考察了对霍姆斯的描述的转变，以及霍姆斯在19世纪漫长职业生涯中对遗传决定论和种族的思考，以此作为医学史上对历史人物不断演变的评价的一个测试案例。
