William Osler Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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Humanity has but three great enemies: fever, famine, and war; of these by far the greatest, by far the most terrible, is fever.
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Medicine is learned by the bedside and not in the classroom. Let not your conceptions of disease come from words heard in the lecture room or read from the book. See, and then reason and compare and control. But see first.
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Every patient you see is a lesson in much more than the malady from which he suffers.
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Gentlemen, I have a confession to make. Half of what we have taught you is in error, and furthermore we cannot tell you which half it is
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Now the way of life that I preach is a habit to be acquired gradually by long and steady repetition. It is the practice of living for the day only, and for the day's work.
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As it can be maintained that all the great advances have come from men under forty, so the history of the world shows that a very large proportion of the evils may be traced to the sexagenarians, nearly all the great mistakes politically and socially, all of the worst poems, most of the bad pictures, a majority of the bad novels and not a few of the bad sermons and speeches.
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The young doctor should look about early for an avocation, a pastime, that will take him away from patients, pills, and potions.
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Without egotism and full of feeling, laughter is the music of life.
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There are, in truth, no specialties in medicine, since to know fully many of the most important diseases a man must be familiar with their manifestations in many organs.
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Varicose veins are the result of an improper selection of grandparents.
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There are three classes of human beings: men, women and women physicians.
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There are only two sorts of doctors; those who practise with their brains, and those who practise with their tongues.
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Personally, I do not see in Canada it would be a feasible thing if any Ministry organized taking over both the Health and the Disease of the entire community... even in the most favourable circumstances... there would be that absence of competition and that sense of independence... I do not believe it would be good for the profession or good for the Public.
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Medicine is a science of uncertainty and an art of probability.
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He who studies medicine without books sails an uncharted sea, but he who studies medicine without patients does not go to sea at all.
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Care more for the individual patient than for the special features of the disease. . . . Put yourself in his place . . . The kindly word, the cheerful greeting, the sympathetic look - these the patient understands.
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The hardest conviction to get into the mind of a beginner is that the education upon which he is engaged is not a college course, not a medical course, but a life course, for which the work of a few years under teachers is but a preparation.
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A physician who treats himself has a fool for a patient.
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The good physician treats the disease; the great physician treats the patient who has the disease.
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The uselessness of men above sixty years of age and the incalculable benefit it would be in commercial, in political, and in professional life, if as a matter of course, men stopped work at this age.
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The trained nurse has become one of the great blessings of humanity, taking a place beside the physician and the priest.
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Few diseases present greater difficulties in the way of diagnosis than malignant endocarditis, difficulties which in many cases are practi- cally insurmountable. It is no disparagement to the many skilled physicians who have put their cases upon record to say that, in fully one-half the diagnosis was made post mortem.
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The successful teacher is no longer on a height, pumping knowledge at high pressure into passive receptacles.
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A well-trained, sensible doctor is one of the most valuable assets of a community.