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

William Osler

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William Osler
Age: 70 †
Born: 1849
Born: July 12
Died: 1919
Died: December 29
Physician
Professor
Sir William Osler
Sir William
WO
Medicine
Science
Art
Probability
Uncertainty
Medical

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Laughter is the music of life.
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We are constantly misled by the ease with which our minds fall into the ruts of one or two experiences
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In seeking absolute truth we aim at the unattainable and must be content with broken portions.
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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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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.
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The very first step toward success in any occupation is to become interested in it. Locke put this in a very happy way when he said, give a pupil a relish of knowledge and you put life into his work.
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The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism.
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Listen to your patient, he is telling you the diagnosis.
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We doctors have always been a simple trusting folk. Did we not believe Galen implicitly for 1500 years and Hippocrates for more than 2000?
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For the general practitioner a well-used library is one of the few correctives of the premature senility which is so apt to take him.
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We are here to add what we can to life, not to get what we can from life.
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The true poetry of life: the poetry of the commonplace, of the ordinary man, of the plain, toil-worn woman, with their loves and their joys, their sorrows and their griefs.
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Fed on the dry husks of facts, the human heart has a hidden want which science cannot supply.
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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.
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Throw away all ambition beyond that of doing the day's work well. The travelers on the road to success live in the present, heedless of taking thought for the morrow. Live neither in the past nor in the future, but let each day's work absorb your entire energies, and satisfy your wildest ambition.
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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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Advice is sought to confirm a position already taken.
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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 successful teacher is no longer on a height, pumping knowledge at high pressure into passive receptacles.
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Varicose veins are the result of an improper selection of grandparents.
William Osler