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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.

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
Law
Alike
Faces
Behave
Individual
Bodies
Two
Individuals
Body
Medicine
Variability
Life
Disease
Diseased
Conditions
Abnormal
Health
React

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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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There are, in truth, no specialties in medicine, since to know fully many of the most important diseases a man must be familiar with their manifestations in many organs.
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Varicose veins are the result of an improper selection of grandparents.
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He who knows syphilis knows medicine
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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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Nothing will sustain you more potently than the power to recognize in your humdrum routine, as perhaps it may be thought, the true poetry of life.
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Acquire the art of detachment, the virtue of method, and the quality of thoroughness, but above all the grace of humility.
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Now of the difficulties bound up with the public in which we doctors work, I hesitate to speak in a mixed audience. Common sense in matters medical is rare, and is usually in inverse ratio to the degree of education.
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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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Patients rarely die of the disease from which they suffer. Secondary or terminal infections are the real cause of death.
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Faith is a most precious commodity, without which we should be very badly off.
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Happiness lies in the absorption in some vocation which satisfies the soul.
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Shed, as you do your garments, your daily sins, whether of omission or commission, and you will wake a free man, with a new life.
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Advice is sought to confirm a position already taken.
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The person who takes medicine must recover twice, once from the disease and once from the medicine.
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Nothing is life is more wonderful than faith.
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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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Shut out all of your past except that which will help you weather your tomorrows.
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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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Look wise, say nothing, and grunt. Speech was given to conceal thought.
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