Overview Oliver Wendell Holmes was an American physician, poet, and humorist notable for his medical research and teaching, and as the author of the “Breakfast-Table” series of essays. He was born in 1809 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and died in 1984. He received his M.D. in 1836 from Harvard Medical School. His most well-known essay was the controversial "The Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever" (1843). In 1886, he received honorary degrees from Oxford, Cambridge, and Edinburgh Universities. He was...