Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr
1809 - 1894
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Senior was a physician, professor at Harvard Medical School, and man of letters.
He is known for the book, The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table (1857) and poems, "Old Ironsides," "The Chambered Nautilus," and "The Deacon's Masterpiece, or, the Wonderful One-Hoss Shay."
As a physician, he is remembered for his investigation of the contagiousness of puerperal fever (two decades before the advent of the germ theory), his advocacy for therapeutic skepticism and rationalism, and for coining such terms as “anesthesia.”
He called Boston the “Hub of the solar system” and described its “Brahmin” caste.