William Osler Quotes
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In the Mortality Bills, pneumonia is an easy second, to tuberculosis; indeed in many cities the death-rate is now higher and it has become, to use the phrase of Bunyan 'the captain of the men of death.'
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The Scots are the backbone of Canada. They are all right in their three vital parts - head, heart and haggis.
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The teacher's life should have three periods, study until twenty-five, investigation until forty, profession until sixty, at which age I would have him retired on a double allowance.
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Jaundice is the disease that your friends diagnose.
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It is much more important to know what sort of a patient has a disease than what sort of a disease a patient has.
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But whatever you do, take neither yourselves nor your fellow-creatures too seriously. There is tragedy enough in our daily routine, but there is room too for a keen sense of the absurdities and incongruities of life, and in the shifting panorama no one sees better than the doctor the perennial sameness of men’s ways.
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The librarian of today, and it will be true still more of the librarians of tomorrow, are not fiery dragons interposed between the people and the books. They are useful public servants, who manage libraries in the interest of the public . . . Many still think that a great reader, or a writer of books, will make an excellent librarian. This is pure fallacy.
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Live neither in the past nor in the future, but let each day absorb all your interest, energy and enthusiasm. The best preparation for tomorrow is to live today superbly well.
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Start at once a bedside library and spend the last half hour of the day in communion with the saints of humanity.
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The higher education so much needed today is not given in the school, is not to be bought in the market place, but it has to be wrought out in each one of us for himself; it is the silent influence of character on character.
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The higher the standard of education in a profession, the less marked will be the charlatanism.
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Let each hour of the day have its allotted duty, and cultivate that power of concentration which grows with its exercise.
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Variability is the law of life, and as no two faces are the same, so no two bodies are alike, and no two individuals react alike and behave alike under the abnormal conditions which we know as disease.
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Laughter is the music of life.
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Observe, record, tabulate, communicate. Use your five senses. Learn to see, learn to hear, learn to feel, learn to smell, and know that by practice alone you can become expert.
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To have a group of cloistered clinicians away completely from the broad current of professional life would be bad for teacher and worse for student. The primary work of a professor of medicine in a medical school is in the wards, teaching his pupils how to deal with patients and their diseases.
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No bubble is so iridescent or floats longer than that blown by the successful teacher.
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Patients rarely die of the disease from which they suffer. Secondary or terminal infections are the real cause of death.
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The very first step towards success in any occupation is to become interested in it.
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Soap and water and common sense are the best disinfectants.
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The future belongs to Science. More and more she will control the destinies of the nations. Already she has them in her crucible and on her balances.
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A library represents the mind of its collector, his fancies and foibles, his strength and weakness, his prejudices and preferences. Particularly is this the case if, to the character of a collector, he adds - or tries to add - the qualities of a student who wishes to know the books and the lives of the men who wrote them. The friendships of his life, the phases of his growth, the vagaries of his mind, all are represented.
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The clean tongue, the clear head, and the bright eye are birthrights of each day.
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The natural man has only two primal passions, to get and beget.