Quote

We doctors have always been a simple trusting folk. Did we not believe Galen implicitly for 1500 years and Hippocrates for more than 2000?

William Osler

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

William Osler
Age: 70 †
Born: 1849
Born: July 12
Died: 1919
Died: December 29
Physician
Professor
Sir William Osler
Sir William
WO
Trusting
Folk
Doctors
Folks
Simple
Believe
Hippocrates
Years
Galen
Always
Implicitly

More quotes by William Osler

Image
Beware of people who call you 'Doc.' They rarely pay their bills.
William Osler
Image
I desire no other epitaph - no hurry about it, I may say - than the statement that I taught medical students in the wards, as I regard this as by far the most useful and important work I have been called upon to do.
William Osler
Image
A physician who treats himself has a fool for a patient.
William Osler
Image
There are three classes of human beings: men, women and women physicians.
William Osler
Image
We are all dietetic sinners only a small percent of what we eat nourishes us the balance goes to waste and loss of energy.
William Osler
Image
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.
William Osler
Image
Listen to your patient, he is telling you the diagnosis.
William Osler
Image
The only way to treat the common cold is with contempt.
William Osler
Image
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
Image
But whatever you do, take neither yourselves nor your fellow-creatures too seriously. There is tragedy enough in our daily routine, but there is room too for a keen sense of the absurdities and incongruities of life, and in the shifting panorama no one sees better than the doctor the perennial sameness of men’s ways.
William Osler
Image
What is the student but a lover courting a fickle mistress who ever eludes his grasp?
William Osler
Image
The great minds, the great works transcend all limitations of time, of language, and of race, and the scholar can never feel initiated into the company of the elect until he can approach all of life's problems from the cosmopolitan standpoint.
William Osler
Image
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
Image
That man can interrogate as well as observe nature was a lesson slowly learned in his evolution.
William Osler
Image
One of the first duties of the physician is to educate the masses not to take medicine.
William Osler
Image
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.
William Osler
Image
The person who takes medicine must recover twice, once from the disease and once from the medicine.
William Osler
Image
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.
William Osler
Image
Humanity has but three great enemies: fever, famine, and war of these by far the greatest, by far the most terrible, is fever.
William Osler
Image
When schemes are laid in advance, it is surprising how often the circumstances will fit in with them.
William Osler