Oliver Wendell Holmes

Holmes, Oliver Wendell (1809–94), U.S. author and physician. The father of jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., he is best known for his light essays and poems, which appeared in the Atlantic Monthly from 1857, and in book form as The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table (1858) and 3 sequels. He taught at Harvard, 1847–82; his paper The Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever (1843) is considered the first major contribution to medicine by an American.