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If it were not for the great variability among individuals, medicine might as well be a science, not an art.

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
Science
Art
Wells
Might
Variability
Well
Individuals
Great
Medicine
Among
Individual

More quotes by William Osler

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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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The good physician treats the disease the great physician treats the patient who has the disease.
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Fed on the dry husks of facts, the human heart has a hidden want which science cannot supply.
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Throw away all ambition beyond that of doing the day's work well. The travelers on the road to success live in the present, heedless of taking thought for the morrow. Live neither in the past nor in the future, but let each day's work absorb your entire energies, and satisfy your wildest ambition.
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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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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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Work is the open sesame of every portal, the great equalizer in the world, the true philosopher's stone which transmutes all the base metal of humanity into gold.
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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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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.
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.
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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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To it, more than to anything else, I owe whatever success I have had - to this power of settling down to the day's work and trying to do it to the best of one's ability, and letting the future take care of itself.
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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The young doctor should look about early for an avocation, a pastime, that will take him away from patients, pills, and potions.
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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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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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Nature, the great Moloch, which exacts a frightful tax of human blood, sparing neither young nor old taking the child from the cradle, the mother from her babe, and the father from the family.
William Osler
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Look wise, say nothing, and grunt. Speech was given to conceal thought.
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.
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What is patience but an equanimity which enables you to rise superior to the trials of life.
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