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Founding Physicians  Every one of the "Big Four," as they are
known at Hopkins, was a character, a larger-than-life
personality: pathologist William Henry Welch, a stout bachelor
whose favorite pastime was a week of swimming, carnival rides
and five-dessert dinners in Atlantic City; surgeon William
Stewart Halsted, whose severity with students masked an almost
debilitating shyness; internist William Osler, king of pranks;
and gynecologist Howard Kelly, snake collector and evangelical
saver of souls.  As Hopkins' most famous medical school
professors, they sat in John Singer Sargent's London studio in
1905 for a portrait that now hangs in the Welch Medical Library.
(Lore has it that much of Halsted's figure was painted in
disappearing pigment, so disgusted was Sargent with Halsted's
strident objection to having blue shadows painted under his
eyes. Halsted does, in fact, appear a bit fuzzier than his
colleagues, but curators and art experts insist