Dear WW: Dr. Osler was a Canadian who taught at Johns Hopkins. In WWI, families of wounded Canadian soldiers were greatly relieved by a telegram saying their son had been seen by Dr. Osler. That was all they needed to be sure he was well cared for. But the name is a variant of "hostler". My grandfather kept four horses for making house visits. When my father was small, my grandfather had an hostler who lived in a small room in the attic. One of the mementos of his stay was a dozen or more phosphorus matches in a little ceramic saucer with an integral cup with millimetre raised ridges close set, with a second chemical to help phosphorus match ignite. Smokers who used the match sticks for toothpicks, and carried them in their mouths for extended periods developed a nasty lesion called "phossy" jaw. That was also fate of many workers who licked tiny brushes to put phosphorus on watch dial numerals to make them legible in dark.