Thomas Bowdler: censor, philanthropist, and doctor

A recent biography of the physician William Osler credits him with having generated a verb, to “oslerize”, as a synonym for euthanasia. Actually, Osler had been mocking his own impending senescent uselessness at the time of his move from Baltimore to Oxford. That neologism did not last. Two earlier doctors who did make it to the dictionaries in a verbally eponymous way were F A Mesmer and Thomas Bowdler, and Bowdler, at least, would not have liked the recognition. The first use of the verb to “bowdlerise” seems to have been in 1836, with a reference to “names in the writings of the apostles which modern ultrachristians would probably have Bowdler-ized”. However, Bowdler is better remembered for his cleaning up of the plays of Shakespeare.