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.
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