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

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
Listen
Diagnosis
Patient
Telling

More quotes by William Osler

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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.
William Osler
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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.
William Osler
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The natural man has only two primal passions, to get and beget.
William Osler
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Without faith a man can do nothing with it all things are possible.
William Osler
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What is patience but an equanimity which enables you to rise superior to the trials of life.
William Osler
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Now the way of life that I preach is a habit to be acquired gradually by long and steady repetition. It is the practice of living for the day only, and for the day's work.
William Osler
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Few diseases present greater difficulties in the way of diagnosis than malignant endocarditis, difficulties which in many cases are practi- cally insurmountable. It is no disparagement to the many skilled physicians who have put their cases upon record to say that, in fully one-half the diagnosis was made post mortem.
William Osler
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Even in populous districts, the practice of medicine is a lonely road which winds up-hill all the way and a man may easily go astray and never reach the Delectable Mountains unless he early finds those shepherd guides of whom Bunyan tells, Knowledge, Experience, Watchful, and Sincere.
William Osler
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There is no more potent antidote to the corroding influence of mammon than the presence in the community of a body of men devoted to science, living for investigation and caring nothing for the lust of the eyes and the pride of life.
William Osler
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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.
William Osler
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He who studies medicine without books sails an uncharted sea, but he who studies medicine without patients does not go to sea at all.
William Osler
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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.
William Osler
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There are only two sorts of doctors those who practise with their brains, and those who practise with their tongues.
William Osler
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The young doctor should look about early for an avocation, a pastime, that will take him away from patients, pills, and potions.
William Osler
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The philosophies of one age have become the absurdities of the next, and the foolishness of yesterday has become the wisdom of tomorrow.
William Osler
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Happiness lies in the absorption in some vocation which satisfies the soul.
William Osler
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Advice is sought to confirm a position already taken.
William Osler
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The young physician starts life with 20 drugs for each disease, and the old physician ends life with one drug for 20 diseases.
William Osler
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Live neither in the past nor in the future, but let each day's work absorb your entire energies, and satisfy your widest ambition.
William Osler
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The higher education so much needed today is not given in the school, is not to be bought in the market place, but it has to be wrought out in each one of us for himself it is the silent influence of character on character.
William Osler