"[William] Osler also made a very significant contribution to the realization of Flexner’s task by helping to create the Interurban Clinical Club in 1905 [8]. The purpose of this organization was the exchanging of ideas and the nurturing of fellowship among medical professors in the leading Eastern medical schools. Its aims included several goals that Flexner’s conception of medical education also incorporated; scientific investigation of disease was promoted, and methods of teaching were to be shared and improved. The club was largely responsible for the development of the scientific base of American medicine. It was the springboard to eminence for department and divisional heads of the leading medical schools in America. These were the individuals who forged institutional philosophies and standards of excellence in medical schools throughout the next century. The era of the clinical scientist in America dates from this organization; its members were academic physicians who became the vital link between the practicing physician and the basic scientist" (Duffy, "The Flexner Report -- 100 years later, " Yale J. Biol. Med., 84, (2011) 269-276).

Second edition: The Interurban Clinical Club (1905-1994) N.p.: The Interurban Clinical Club, 1995.