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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.

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
Called
Statement
Upon
Statements
Desire
Useful
May
Medical
Important
Regard
Work
Students
Wards
Taught
Epitaph
Education
Hurry

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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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We are constantly misled by the ease with which our minds fall into the ruts of one or two experiences
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The natural man has only two primal passions, to get and beget.
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Varicose veins are the result of an improper selection of grandparents.
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A man is sane morally at thirty, rich mentally at forty, wise spiritually at fifty-or never!
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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.
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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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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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To confess ignorance is often wiser than to beat about the bush with a hypothetical diagnosis.
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The hardest conviction to get into the mind of a beginner is that the education upon which he is engaged is not a college course, not a medical course, but a life course, for which the work of a few years under teachers is but a preparation.
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Start at once a bedside library and spend the last half hour of the day in communion with the saints of humanity.
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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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Gentlemen, I have a confession to make. Half of what we have taught you is in error, and furthermore we cannot tell you which half it is
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Engrossed late and soon in professional cares, getting and spending, you may may so lay waste your powers that you may find, too late, with hearts given away, that t here is no place in your habit-stricken souls for those gentler influences which make your life worth living.
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The great majority gave no signs one way or the other like birth, their death was a sleep and a forgetting.
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Live neither in the past nor in the future, but let each day absorb all your interest, energy and enthusiasm. The best preparation for tomorrow is to live today superbly well.
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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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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 practice of medicine is an art, not a trade a calling, not a business a calling in which your heart will be exercised equally with your head.
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To do today's work well and not to bother about tomorrow is the secret of accomplishment
William Osler