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To confess ignorance is often wiser than to beat about the bush with a hypothetical 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
Ignorance
Often
Hypothetical
Diagnosis
Confess
Wiser
Bush
Beat
Beats

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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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Happiness lies in the absorption in some vocation which satisfies the soul.
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No bubble is so iridescent or floats longer than that blown by the successful teacher.
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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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Varicose veins are the result of an improper selection of grandparents.
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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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No man is really happy or safe without a hobby.
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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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Take the sum of human achievement in action, in science, in art, in literature subtract the work of the men above forty, and while we should miss great treasures, even priceless treasures, we would practically be where we are today ... The effective, moving, vitalizing work of the world is done between the ages of twenty-five and forty.
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The extraordinary development of modern science may be her undoing. Specialism, now a necessity, has fragmented the specialities themselves in a way that makes the outlook hazardous. The workers lose all sense of proportion in a maze of minutiae.
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It is not the delicate neurotic person who is prone to angina, but the robust, the vigorous in mind and body, the keen and ambitious man, the indicator of whose engines is always at full speed ahead.
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A well-trained, sensible doctor is one of the most valuable assets of a community.
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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.
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We are all dietetic sinners only a small percent of what we eat nourishes us the balance goes to waste and loss of energy.
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Conservatism and old fogeyism are totally different things the motto of one is Prove all things and hold fast that which is good and of the other Prove nothing but hold fast that which is old.
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Every patient you see is a lesson in much more than the malady from which he suffers.
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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.
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One of the first duties of the physician is to educate the masses not to take medicine.
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There are only two sorts of doctors those who practise with their brains, and those who practise with their tongues.
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No dreams, no visions, no delicious fantasies, no castles in the air, with which, as the old song so truly says, hearts are broken, heads are turned.
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