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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?

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
Always
Implicitly
Trusting
Folk
Doctors
Folks
Simple
Believe
Hippocrates
Years
Galen

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To do today's work well and not to bother about tomorrow is the secret of accomplishment
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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.
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The trained nurse has become one of the great blessings of humanity, taking a place beside the physician and the priest.
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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.
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Things cannot always go your way. Learn to accept in silence the minor aggravations, cultivate the gift of taciturnity and consume your own smoke with an extra draught of hard work, so that those about you may not be annoyed with the dust and soot of your complaints.
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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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It is much simpler to buy books than to read them and easier to read them than to absorb their contents.
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Jaundice is the disease that your friends diagnose.
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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.
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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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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.
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That man can interrogate as well as observe nature was a lesson slowly learned in his evolution.
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The very first step towards success in any occupation is to become interested in it.
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Soap and water and common sense are the best disinfectants.
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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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Faith is a most precious commodity, without which we should be very badly off.
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Avoid wine and women - choose a freckly-faced girl for a wife they are invariably more amiable.
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Courage and cheerfulness will not only carry you over the rough places in life, but will enable you to bring comfort and help to the weak-hearted and will console you in the sad hours.
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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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No bubble is so iridescent or floats longer than that blown by the successful teacher.
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