, . . . , which wasn’t named for Sherlock
Oak Park’s Holmes School is named for Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., a medical doctor and magazine columnist who combined the two skills to help make childbirth safer for mothers.
As a medical man, he taught at Dartmouth and Harvard, serving at Harvard for a time as dean of its medical school. He made his mark in medical history with his landmark 1843 essay, “The Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever,” about the “black death of childbed,” which was taking a terrible toll on mothers giving birth. Doctors and nurses were to blame who did not wash their hands before helping a woman deliver, he argued. . . . .
If this be the Wednesday Journal column for July, which it be, make the most of it.
Blithe Spirit 