William Osler Quotes

The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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)

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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,

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.

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.

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.

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.

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;

The person who takes medicine must recover twice, once  from the disease and once from the medicine.” — William Osler, MD

His name was Sir William Osler. Here are the twenty-one words that he read in the spring of 1871—twenty-one words from Thomas Carlyle that helped him lead a life free from worry: “Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.

Sir William Osler, the first Professor of Medicine at Johns Hopkins Medical School and a unique teacher and clinician, said: “One of the first duties of the physician is to educate… [people] not to take medicine.” You should not assume a physician is inadequate if he does not give a prescription at the end of your visit.

The famous Canadian physician William Osler once wrote, “In science the credit goes to the man who convinced the world, not to the man to whom the idea first occurs.