William Boyd must have inspired as many students as any other physician in the world, perhaps even rivalling Sir William Osler. Textbooks were the principal reason for this global impact: Boyd’s extraordinary gift of direct and colourful prose enlivened the usually dead pages of pathology texts.
Born in Scotland, Boyd developed a taste for rock climbing, and spent many days, in his youth, clambering about native hills and crags. He completed his formative education in Glasgow and, by 1902, was enrolled at the University of Edinburgh to study medicine. He was gold medalist upon graduation. His first professional work was as assistant physician in the Derby Borough Asylum, a career chosen, perhaps, after he saw his sister suffer a psychiatric illness. The separation of this from his future work as a pathologist was less than it might seem, however, as his major responsibility at the asylum was performing autopsies.
When war broke out in 1914, Boyd entered the Royal
Army Medical Corps, serving in Flanders in 1914 and 1915. One result was
a fascinating but largely forgotten little book, With a Field Ambulance
at Ypres. While he was serving in the field, he was appointed to his
first Canadian post, Professor of Pathology in the Manitoba Medical College
in Winnipeg.
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The same character traits that inspired William Boyd's rock climbing were parlayed into his spontaneous lectures and animated medical texts. His unrestricted prose was ingurgitated by medical students around the world for nearly half a century [Photo, courtesy Charles G. Roland] |
During his two decades in Winnipeg, Boyd wrote medical textbooks that made him a household name in the medical profession. Devoted entirely to pathology, his textbooks combined skillful, meticulous observations with an unusual, inventive prose style that encompassed clarity and wit. The result was the best of all teaching methods: statements that his readers would remember. For example, he wrote about pathologic processes that made “bones look as if they have been twisted by a giant hand.”
In the beginning, some criticized his lively style, perhaps in the misguided belief that difficult, convoluted prose is more “scientific,” thus more desirable. Boyd rejected this approach, knowing the equation between good writing and memorable reading. Readers found it easy to remember colourful passages such as:
When we think of cancer in general terms we are apt to conjure up a process characterized by a steady, remorseless and inexorable progress in which the disease is all-conquering, and none of the immunological and other defensive forces which help us to survive the onslaught of bacterial and viral infections can serve to halt the faltering footsteps to the grave.A master of arresting phraseology, Boyd knew the necessity of getting his readers’ attention. His best-known aphorism, “Of all the ailments which may blow out life’s little candle, heart disease is the chief,” epitomizes this colourful diction.
The problem that besieges well-written scientific books is that science advances, and no matter how readable a text may be, it is almost always set aside in favour of the more modern works or the next generation of texts. This, though inevitable, is unfortunate. Boyd’s descriptive pathology, though it may today be incomplete, is not invalid. Today’s students not exposed to the writings of this fluent interpreter of the faltering human body risk missing such sparkling gems as:
It would indeed be rash for a mere pathologist to venture forth on the uncharted sea of the endocrines, strewn as it is with the wrecks of shattered hypotheses where even the most wary mariner may easily lose his way as he seeks to steer his bark amid the glandular temptations whose siren voices have proved the downfall of many who have gone before.Such textbooks as Surgical Pathology (1925), Pathology of Internal Disease (1931), Textbook of Pathology (1932), and Introduction to Medical Science (1937) have been read and referred to by tens of thousands of physicians and students from around the world. Translated into many languages, they became international best-sellers. He wrote some books for pathologists, but most of his books were for wider audiences: surgeons, medical students, interns, and residents. One who knew Boyd only later recalls an older colleague telling him, “It doesn’t matter what textbook you recommend, they will all read Boyd.”
Boyd kept “a commonplace book,” a notebook (or many notebooks) into which one records especially appealing quotations from works one is reading. Usually one’s own high thoughts often expunged later are included. Boyd’s book certainly tells us much about him. As a young man he noted down an aphorism from Milton: “There is no misery in being blind. It would be miserable not to be able to bear blindness.” Six decades later, Boyd himself was blind. But there is no evidence that he was miserable.
William Boyd died peacefully in his sleep in Toronto on March 10, 1979, a much honoured and globally respected pathologist.
Charles Roland
