Short biography of oliver wendell holmes

Two prominent figures in American intellectual history, father and son, went by the name of Oliver Wendell Holmes. Although the terms "Jr." and "Sr." would apply, they were not consistently used, leading to some confusion.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
The first Oliver Wendell Holmes made significant contributions to both medicine and literature. Born on August 29, 1809, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, he was educated at Phillips Academy in Exeter and at Harvard.

He declined to follow his father`s wishes and enter the ministry, and after a brief time in law school, he lost interest in that as well. He decided instead to enter medicine. In 1830, he entered the medical college in Boston, where the training was not particularly modern.

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Holmes was dismayed but such ancient and entirely ineffective practices as bloodletting. He went to Paris in 1833 to study at the Ecole de Medicine. Practices there represented the most advanced medicine of the time, and Holmes acquire