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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
Wells
Might
Variability
Well
Individuals
Great
Medicine
Among
Individual
Science
Art

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Without faith a man can do nothing with it all things are possible.
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For the general practitioner a well-used library is one of the few correctives of the premature senility which is so apt to take him.
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The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism.
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It cannot be too often or too forcibly brought home to us that the hope of the profession is with the men who do its daily work in general practice.
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Varicose veins are the result of an improper selection of grandparents.
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Perhaps no sin so easily besets us as a sense of self-satisfied superiority to others.
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The good physician treats the disease the great physician treats the patient who has the disease.
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The true poetry of life: the poetry of the commonplace, of the ordinary man, of the plain, toil-worn woman, with their loves and their joys, their sorrows and their griefs.
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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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Nothing is life is more wonderful than faith.
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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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The very first step towards success in any occupation is to become interested in it.
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It is not as if our homeopathic brothers are asleep: far from it, they are awake - many of them at any rate - to the importance of the scientific study of disease.
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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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Advice is sought to confirm a position already taken.
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Medicine is a science of uncertainty and an art of probability.
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Be calm and strong and patient. Meet failure and disappointment with courage. Rise superior to the trials of life, and never give in to hopelessness or despair. In danger, in adversity, cling to your principles and ideals. Aequanimitas!
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No human being is constituted to know the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth and even the best of men must be content with fragments, with partial glimpses, never the full fruition.
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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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Few diseases present greater difficulties in the way of diagnosis than malignant endocarditis, difficulties which in many cases are practi- cally insurmountable. It is no disparagement to the many skilled physicians who have put their cases upon record to say that, in fully one-half the diagnosis was made post mortem.
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