At Johns Hopkins University's medical school, launched in 1894 as America's first to teach "scientific medicine", the eminent Sir William Osler was succeeded as professor of medicine by Llewellys Barker, who became a prominent proponent of focal infection theory. Although many of Hopkins' medical faculty remained skeptics, Barker's colleague William Thayer cast support. As Hopkins' chief physician, Barker was a pivotal convert propelling the theory to the center of American routine medical practice. Russell Cecil, famed author of "Cecil's Essentials of Medicine", too, lent support. In 1921, British surgeon Hunter announced that oral sepsis was "coming of age".