Aequanimitas Quotes

Be calm and strong and patient. Meet failure and disappointment with courage. Rise superior to the trials of life, and never give in to hopelessness or despair. In danger, in adversity, cling to your principles and ideals. Aequanimitas! Sir William Osler.

One of the first essentials in securing a good-natured equanimity is not to expect too much of the people amongst whom you dwell.

The practice of medicine is an art, not a trade; a calling, not a business; a calling in which your heart will be exercised equally with your head. THE MASTER-WORD IN MEDICINE, IN AEQUANIMITAS, 368.

Imperturbability means coolness and presence of mind under all circumstances, calmness amid storm, clearness of judgment in moments of grave peril, immobility, impassiveness, or, to use an old and expressive word, phlegm.

In the first place, in the physician or surgeon no quality takes rank with imperturbability, and I propose for a few minutes to direct your attention to this essential bodily virtue.

Perfect happiness for student and teacher will come with the abolition of examinations, which are stumbling blocks and rocks of offense in the pathway of the true student.

Errors in judgment must occur in the practice of an art which consists largely of balancing probabilities. TEACHER AND STUDENT, IN AEQUANIMITAS, 38.

At the outset do not be worried about this big question — Truth. It is a very simple matter if each one of you starts with the desire to get as much as possible. No human being is constituted to know the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth; and even the best of men must be content with fragments, with partial glimpses, never the full fruition.

We, the doctors, are so fallible, ever beset with the common fatal facility of reaching conclusions from superficial observations, and constantly misled by the ease with which our minds fall into the ruts of one or two experiences. TEACHER AND STUDENT, IN AEQUANIMITAS, 35–6.

The trained nurse as a factor in life may be regarded from many points of view—philanthropic, social, personal, professional and domestic. To her virtues we have been exceedingly kind—tongues have dropped manna in their description. To her faults—well let us be blind. NURSE AND PATIENT, IN AEQUANIMITAS, 149.

Perhaps no sin so easily besets us as a sense of self-satisfied superiority to others. It cannot always be called pride, that master sin, but more often it is an attitude of mind which either leads to bigotry and prejudice or to such a vaunting conceit in the truth of one’s own beliefs and positions, that there is no room for tolerance of ways and thoughts which are not as ours are. CHAUVINISM IN MEDICINE, IN AEQUANIMITAS, 270.

Yours is a higher and more sacred duty. Think not to light a light before men that they may see your good works; contrariwise, you belong to the great army of quiet workers, physicians and priests, sisters and nurses, all over the world, the members of which strive not neither do they cry, nor are their voices heard in the streets, but to them is given the ministry of consolation in sorrow, need, and sickness. THE MASTER-WORD IN MEDICINE, IN AEQUANIMITAS, 370.

The trained nurse has become one of the great blessings of humanity, taking a place beside the physician and the priest, and not inferior to either in her mission…. Time out of mind she has made one of a trinity…. Kindly heads have always been ready to devise means for allaying suffering; tender hearts, surcharged with the miseries of this “battered caravanserai” [an oriental inn], have ever been ready to speak to the sufferer of a way of peace, and loving hands have ever ministered to those in sorrow, need and sickness. NURSE AND PATIENT, IN AEQUANIMITAS, 156.

In the first place, in the physician or surgeon no quality takes rank with imperturbability…. Imperturbability means coolness and presence of mind under all circumstances, calmness amid storm, clearness of judgment in moments of grave peril, immobility, impassiveness, or, to use an old and expressive word, phlegm. It is the quality which is most appreciated by the laity though often misunderstood by them; and the physician who has the misfortune to be without it, who betrays indecision and worry, and who shows that he is flustered and flurried in ordinary emergencies, loses rapidly the confidence of his patients. AEQUANIMITAS, IN AEQUANIMITAS, 3–4.

aequanimitas,

The philosophies of one age have become the absurdities of the next, and the foolishness of yesterday has become the wisdom of to-morrow. CHAUVINISM IN MEDICINE, IN AEQUANIMITAS,