Sir William Osler's fatal trip to Scotland: "Mrs M" and the University Grants Committee

Abstract

On 23 September 1919, Sir William Osler, after a telephone call from his friend Dyson Perrins, went to Glasgow where he saw a 40-year-old woman, Bethia Fulton Martin, in consultation with three local physicians. Osler called it "one of those remarkable Erythema cases (all sorts of skin lesions and three months on and off consolidation of both lower lobes)." Mrs Martin died 114 days later; her death certificate listed "angioneurotic oedema with chronic nephritis" and "tuberculous enlargement of the mediastinal lymph nodes." Osler died 18 days before Mrs Martin of complications from a respiratory infection acquired on his way home from Scotland. We discuss factors that possibly prompted Osler to go to Scotland, including his role with the newly formed University Grants Committee, and the differential diagnosis of the case, which is mainly between systemic lupus erythematosus and Henoch-Schönlein purpura.

Keywords: Agnes Wallace; Armstrong; Bethia Fulton; Charles William Dyson; Donald Martin; Henoch-Schönlein Purpura Littlejohn; Henry Harvey; MacAlister; Née Wylie Ness; Osler; Robert Barclay; William Buchanan Cameron; William Perrins; systemic lupus erythematosus.