Osler Quotes

The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism.

Listen to your patient; he is telling you the diagnosis.

One of the first duties of the physician is to educate the masses not to take medicine.

the person who takes medicine must recover twice,once from the disease ,and once from the medicine.

The best preparation for tomorrow is to do today's work superbly well.

Acquire the art of detachment, the virtue of method, and the quality of thoroughness, but above all the grace of humility.

We are here to add what we can to life, not to get what we can from life.

The philosophies of one age have become the absurdities of the next, and the foolishness of yesterday has become the wisdom of tomorrow.

Ask not what disease the person has, but rather what person the disease has

The good physician treats the disease; the great physician treats the patient who has the disease.

He who studies medicine without books sails an uncharted sea, but he who studies medicine without patients does not go to sea at all

Jay Levy saw ten women," the doctor later recalled, "And he thought they were all hysterical. Then he saw a man, whose complaints he took seriously.

Think not of the amount to be accomplished, the difficulties to be overcome, or the end to be attained, but set earnestly, at the little task at your elbow, letting that be sufficient for the day.

One special advantage of the skeptical attitude of mind is that a man is never vexed to find that after all he has been in the wrong.

As Sir William Osler once said, “The philosophies of one age have become the absurdities of the next, and the foolishness of yesterday has become the wisdom of tomorrow.

Shut out all of your past except that which will help you weather your tomorrows.

I had learned something, something not found in Hippocrates, Maimonides, or Osler: the physician's duty is not to stave off death or return patients to their old lives, but to take into our arms a patient and family whose lives have disintegrated and work until they can stand back up and face, and make sense of, their own existence.

Look wise, say nothing, and grunt. Speech was given to conceal thought.

Varicose veins are the result of an improper selection of grandparents.

Medicine is a science of uncertainty and an art of probability.

Live neither in the past nor in the future, but let each day's work absorb your entire energies, and satisfy your widest ambition.

In science, the credit goes to the man who convinces the world, not to the man to whom the idea first occurs.

The doctor who treats himself has a fool for a patient.

Quit worrying about your health. It'll go away.

Think not of the amount to be accomplished, the difficulties to be overcome, or the end to be attained, but set earnestly at the little task at your elbow, letting that be sufficient for the day. —SIR WILLIAM OSLER, physician (1849–1919)

The failure to cultivate the power of peaceful concentration is the greatest single cause of mental breakdown," the great physician William Osler told the students of Yale . . .

The value of experience is not in seeing much, but in seeing wisely.

It is astonishing with how little reading a doctor can practice medicine, but is not astonishing how badly he may do it.

Nothing in life is more wonderful than faith - the one great moving force which we can neither weigh in the balance nor test in the crucible.

Think not of the amount to be accomplished, the difficulties to be overcome, or the end to be attained, but set earnestly at the little task at your elbow, letting that be sufficient for the day. —SIR WILLIAM OSLER, physician

Nothing will sustain you more potently than the power to recognize in you humdrum routine, the true poetry of life - the poetry of the commonplace, of the ordinary person, of the plain, toilworn, with their loves and their joys, their sorrows and griefs.

In seeking absolute truth we aim at the unattainable and must be content with broken portions.

The very first step towards success in any occupation is to become interested in it

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.

There are three classes of human beings: men, women, and women physicians. —SIR WILLIAM OSLER

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.

We may indeed be justly proud of our apostolic succesion. THESE ARE OUR METHODS - to carefully observe the phenomena of life in all its stages , to cultivate reasoning faculty so as to be able to know the true from the false. THIS IS OUR WORK - to prevent disease, to relieve suffering and to heal the sick.

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.

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.

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

To do today's work well and not to bother about tomorrow is the secret of accomplishment

Think not of the amount to be accomplished, the difficulties to be overcome, or the end to be attained, but set earnestly at the little task at your elbow, letting that be sufficient for the day. —SIR WILLIAM OSLER, physician (I849 –I919)

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.

Perhaps no sin so easily besets us as a sense of self-satisfied superiority to others.

The incessant concentration of thought upon one subject, however interesting, tethers a man's mind in a narrow field.

But if I did not know what I wanted, I had learned something, something not found in Hippocrates, Maimonides, or Osler: the physician’s duty is not to stave off death or return patients to their old lives, but to take into our arms a patient and family whose lives have disintegrated and work until they can stand back up and face, and make sense of, their own existence.

By the end of medical school, most students tended to focus on "lifestyle" specialities - those with more humane hours, higher salaries, and lower pressures - the idealism of their med school application essays tempered or lost. As graduation neared and we sat down, in a Yale tradition, to re-write our commencement oath - a melding of the words of Hippocrates, Maimonides, Osler, along with a few other great medical forefathers - several students argued for the removal of language insisting that we place our patients' interests above our own. (The rest of us didn't allow this discussion to continue for long. The words stayed. This kind of egotism struck me as antithetical to medicine and, it should be noted, entirely reasonable. Indeed, this is how 99 percent of people select their jobs: pay, work environment, hours. But thats the point. Putting lifestyle first is how you find a job - not a calling).

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.

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.

To talk of diseases is a sort of Arabian Nights entertainment.

I'm not a garden expert in any sense of the meaning, only someone who blunders about in the shrubbery.

Reading books about gardens is a potent pastime; books nourish a gardener's mind in the same way as manure nourishes plants.

I didn't know. But if I did not know what I wanted, I had learned something, something not found in Hippocrates, Maimonides, or Osler: the physician's duty is not to stave off death or return patients to their old lives, but to take into our arms a patient and family whose lives have disintegrated and work until they can stand back up and face, and make sense of, their own existence.

I didn’t know. But if I did not know what I wanted, I had learned something, something not found in Hippocrates, Maimonides, or Osler: the physician’s duty is not to stave off death or return patients to their old lives, but to take into our arms a patient and family whose lives have disintegrated and work until they can stand back up and face, and make sense of, their own existence.

I'll beat you like a red headed stepchild.

if oxen and lions and horses had hands and could draw, they would represent their gods as oxen and lions and horses.

The clean tongue, the clear head and the bright eye are birth rights of each day

It is much more important to know what sort of a patient has a disease than what sort of a disease a patient has.

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.

The Anatomy of Melancholy was regarded by Sir William Osler, Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford (1905–19), as the greatest medical treatise every written by a layman.

Humanity has but three great enemies: fever, famine, and war; of these by far the greatest, by far the most terrible, is fever.” Osler

His name was Sir William Osler, and these are the words he read: “Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.

Medicine is a science of uncertainty and an art of probability. BEAN WB. SIR WILLIAM OSLER: APHORISMS, 129.

The best preparation for tomorrow is to do today's work superbly well. ~ William Osler

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.

The art of the practice of medicine is to be learned only by experience; ‘tis not an inheritance; it cannot be revealed. Learn to see, learn to hear, learn to feel, learn to smell, and know that by practice alone can you become expert. THAYER WS. OSLER THE TEACHER, IN OSLER AND OTHER PAPERS, 1.

To keep his mind sweet, the modern scientific man should be saturated with the Bible and Plato, with Homer, Shakespeare, and Milton; to see life through their eyes may enable him to strike a balance between the rational and the emotional, which is the most serious difficulty of the intellectual life. SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY, 42.

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

The young doctor should look about early for an avocation, a pastime, that will take him away from patients, pills, and potions.

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.

secrets, tossing it aside in frustration, then picking it up again, unsure that it had anything for me but, in sounding the words, sensing that it did. I felt that I lacked some critical receptor for the letters to sing, to impart their meaning. It remained opaque, no matter how hard I tried. Why, you ask? Why did I persevere? Who cares about Religio Medici? Well, my hero William Osler cared, that’s who. Osler was the father of modern medicine,

Observation plus thinking has given us the vast stores of knowledge we now possess of the structure of the bodies of living creatures in health and disease. There have been two inherent difficulties—to get men to see straight and to get men to think clearly; but in spite of the frailty of the instrument, the method has been one of the most powerful ever placed in the hands of man. THE PATHOLOGICAL INSTITUTE OF A GENERAL HOSPITAL. GLASGOW MED J 1911;76:321-33.

William Osler, the physician who wrote The Principles and Practice of Medicine in 1892, once told a group of medical students: Banish the future. Live only for the hour and its allotted work. Think not of the amount to be accomplished, the difficulties to be overcome, or the end to be attained, but set earnestly at the little task at your elbow, letting that be sufficient for the day; for surely our plain duty is, as Carlyle says, “Not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.

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 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.

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.

What is your duty in the matter of telling a patient that he is probably the subject of an incurable disease? … One thing is certain; it is not for you to don the black cap, and, assuming the judicial function, take hope from any patient—”hope that comes to all.” LECTURES ON ANGINA PECTORIS AND ALLIED STATES,

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.

All credit to the men who invented paint and canvas, but there’s more credit, eh? to the Raphaels and Holbeins who used those discoveries! Laennec and Osler, those are the men! It’s all very fine, this business of pure research: seeking the truth, unhampered by commercialism or fame-chasing. Getting to the bottom. Ignoring consequences and practical uses. But do you realize if you carry that idea far enough, a man could justify himself for doing nothing but count the cobblestones on Warehouse Avenue — yes and justify himself for torturing people just to see how they screamed — and then sneer at a man who was making millions of people well and happy!

Part One in a Nutshell Fundamental Facts You Should Know About Worry RULE 1: IF YOU WANT TO AVOID WORRY, DO WHAT SIR WILLIAM OSLER DID: LIVE IN “DAY-TIGHT COMPARTMENTS.” DON’T STEW ABOUT THE FUTURE. JUST LIVE EACH DAY UNTIL BEDTIME. RULE 2: THE NEXT TIME TROUBLE—WITH A CAPITAL T—BACKS YOU UP IN A CORNER, TRY THE MAGIC FORMULA OF WILLIS H. CARRIER: a. Ask yourself, “What is the worst that can possibly happen if I can’t solve my problem?” b. Prepare yourself mentally to accept the worst—if necessary. c. Then calmly try to improve upon the worst—which you have already mentally agreed to accept. RULE 3: REMIND YOURSELF OF THE EXORBITANT PRICE YOU CAN PAY FOR WORRY IN TERMS OF YOUR HEALTH. “THOSE WHO DO NOT KNOW HOW TO FIGHT WORRY DIE YOUNG.

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.

Society would have much to gain from decriminalization. On the immediate practical level, we would feel safer in our homes and on our streets and much less concerned about the danger of our cars being burgled. In cities like Vancouver such crimes are often committed for the sake of obtaining drug money. More significantly perhaps, by exorcising this menacing devil of our own creation, we would automatically give up a lot of unnecessary fear. We could all breathe more freely. Many addicts could work at productive jobs if the imperative of seeking illegal drugs did not keep them constantly on the street. It’s interesting to learn that before the War on Drugs mentality took hold in the early twentieth century, a prominent individual such as Dr. William Stewart Halsted, a pioneer of modern surgical practice, was an opiate addict for over forty years. During those decades he did stellar and innovative work at Johns Hopkins University, where he was one of the four founding physicians. He was the first, for example, to insist that members of his surgical team wear rubber gloves — a major advance in eradicating post-operative infections. Throughout his career, however, he never got by with less than 180 milligrams of morphine a day. “On this,” said his colleague, the world-renowned Canadian physician Sir William Osler, “he could do his work comfortably and maintain his excellent vigor.” As noted at the Common Sense for Drug Policy website: Halsted’s story is revealing not only because it shows that with a morphine addiction the proper maintenance dose can be productive. It also illustrates the incredible power of the drug in question. Here was a man with almost unlimited resources — moral, physical, financial, medical — who tried everything he could think of and he was hooked until the day he died. Today we would send a man like that to prison. Instead he became the father of modern surgery.

Read with two objects," advised Osler, "first, to acquaint yourself with the current knowledge on a subject and the steps by which it has been reached, and secondly, and more important, read to understand and analyse your cases."2

An unusual problem developed when a case of smallpox was brought to the hospital. Smallpox was too contagious to be allowed on the wards. Its victims had to be specially isolated. But where? Osler drove the patient up to the mayor of Hamilton’s home, a sure way of getting action. Special accommodation was arranged in a secluded house. Osler visited the patient twice a day until he died, and then did an autopsy on the spot, helped by the German housekeeper.

William Osler, often referred to as the father of modern medicine, told a graduating class of medical students: "A distressing feature in the life of which you are about to enter...is the uncertainty which pertains not alone to our science and art, but to the very hopes and fears which make us men. In seeking out the absolute truth we aim for the unattainable, and must be content with finding broken portions.

It is much more important to know what sort of patient has a disease than what sort of a disease a patient has.” —William Osler, physician and founding professor at Johns Hopkins Hospital

In one of Dr. Westman’s recent studies, 84 obese diabetics followed a strict low-carbohydrate diet—no wheat, cornstarch, sugars, potatoes, rice, or fruit, reducing carbohydrate intake to 20 grams per day (similar to Drs. Osler and Banting’s early-twentieth-century practices). After six months, waistlines (representative of visceral fat) were reduced by over 5 inches, triglycerides dropped by 70 mg/dl, weight dropped 24.5 pounds, and HbA1c was reduced from 8.8 to 7.3 percent. And 95 percent of participants were able to reduce diabetes medications, while 25 percent were able to eliminate medications, including insulin, altogether.35

William Osler’s ironical definition of man as ‘the medicine-taking animal’ is therefore justified inasmuch as it captures something distinctive about humans.

We have lost something. In 1892 the Canadian William Osler, one of the greatest physicians of all time, suspected rheumatoid arthritis—a condition related to scleroderma—to be a stress-related disorder. Today rheumatology all but ignores that wisdom, despite the supporting scientific evidence accumulated in the 110 years since Osler first published his text.

The greater the ignorance, the greater the dogmatism. William Osler (1849–1919)

Sir Thomas Browne's Religio Medici.

Shun as most pernicious that frame of mind, too often, I fear, seen in physicians, which assumes an air of superiority, and limits as worthy of your communion only those with satisfactory collegiate or sartorial credentials. The passports of your fellowship should be honesty of purpose, and a devotion to the highest interests of our profession, and these you will find widely diffused, sometimes apparent only when you get beneath the crust of a rough exterior. THE ARMY SURGEON. MED NEWS [PHILADELPHIA] 1894:318-22.

Beware of words—they are dangerous things. They change colour like the chameleon, and they return like a boomerang. THAYER WS. OSLER THE TEACHER, IN OSLER AND OTHER PAPERS,

It is only by the methodical examination of every system and organ that we get those comprehensive facts from which we can draw reasonably safe inductions. UNPUBLISHED DRAFT OF AN ADDRESS TO MEDICAL STUDENTS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, 1885. PUBLISHED PRIVATELY BY THE OSLER LIBRARY, MCGILL UNIVERSITY, MONTREAL, 2006.

It is much more important to know what kind of patient has the disease than what sort of disease the person has,” Osler instructed his trainees at the turn of the twentieth century.

Emulating the persistence and care of Darwin, we must collect facts with open-minded watchulness, unbiased by crotchets or notions; fact on fact, instance on instance, experiment upon experiment; facts which neatly fit the idea of their relationship, may establish a general principle." Sir William Osler, Counsels and Ideals

If you want to avoid worry, do what Sir William Osler did: Live in "day-tight compartments." Don't stew about the futures. Just live each day u ntil bedtime.

Think not of the amount to be accomplished, the difficulties to be overcome, or the end to be attained, but set earnestly at the little task at your elbow, letting that be sufficient for the day. —SIR WILLIAM OSLER, physician (I849 –I919) ==========

We are here to add what we can to life, not to get what we can from life ~William Osler~

The great physician William Osler once said that all medicines are toxic; it is how they’re used that makes them therapeutic. If used in the wrong setting, in the wrong amounts, they always cause harm;