William Osler (1849–1919) was a renowned Canadian physician and author. He is frequently described as the “Father of Modern Medicine” for his impact on not only medical education but also the practice of medicine. He is the author of the first modern textbook of medicine. His Principles and Practice of Medicine, first published in 1892, went through seventeen editions and became the model for all subsequent medical textbooks.
During his time, Osler was regarded as the most celebrated physician in the history of the world. Harvey Cushing, his student, and first biographer wrote of Osler, “Everyone fortunate enough to have been brought in contact with him shared from the beginning in the universal feeling of devotion.”
Born in a remote part of Ontario known as Bond Head, Osler spent a year at Trinity College in Ontario before deciding on a career in medicine. He attended the Toronto Medical College for two years and in 1872 received his doctor of medicine degree from McGill University in Montreal. He pursued postgraduate studies in London, Berlin, and Vienna. Upon returning to Canada in 1874, he joined the medical faculty at McGill.
From 1888, as one of the four founding professors of Johns Hopkins Hospital, Osler revolutionized the medical curriculum of the United States and Canada, synthesizing the best of the English and German systems. He created the first residency program for specialty training of physicians. He also pioneered the practice of bringing third- and fourth-year medical students into the wards for bedside rounds where he and other physicians demonstrated the art of physical examination.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by William Osler
The first duties of the physician is to educate the masses not to take medicine.
—William Osler
Topics: Doctors
We are here to add what we can to life, not to get what we can from it.
—William Osler
Topics: Life and Living
Let each hour of the day have its allotted duty, and cultivate that power of concentration which grows with its exercise … .
—William Osler
The young physician starts life with 20 drugs for each disease, and the old physician ends life with one drug for 20 diseases.
—William Osler
Topics: Doctors
It is much more important to know what sort of a patient has a disease than what sort of a disease a patient has.
—William Osler
Best possible way to prepare for tomorrow
is to concentrate all your intelligence,
on doing’s today’s work superbly today.
—William Osler
Variability is the law of life, and as no two faces are the same, so no two bodies are alike, and no two individuals react alike and behave alike under the abnormal conditions which we know as disease.
—William Osler
Topics: Health, Life and Living
The best preparation for tomorrow is to do today’s work superbly well.
—William Osler
Topics: Planning, Work, Future, Excellence, Work Ethics, Preparation
Study until twenty five, investigate until forty, profession until sixty, at which age I would have him retired on a double allowance.
—William Osler
Topics: Aging, Age, Retirement
The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism.
—William Osler
Topics: Ignorance
The desire to take medicine is perhaps the greatest feature which distinguishes man from animals.
—William Osler
Topics: Medicine
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
Topics: Eating
Live neither in the past nor in the future, but let each day’s work absorb your entire energies, and satisfy your widest ambition.
—William Osler
Topics: Ambition
Breathes there a man with soul so dead that it does not glow at the thought of what the men of his blood have done and suffered to make his country what it is? There is room, plenty of room, for proper pride of land and birth. What I inveigh against is a cursed spirit of intolerance, conceived in distrust and bred in ignorance, that makes the mental attitude perennially antagonistic, even bitterly antagonistic, to everything foreign, that subordinates everywhere the race to the nation, forgetting the higher claims of human brotherhood.
—William Osler
Topics: Patriotism
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!
—William Osler
Topics: Disappointment
What is the student but a lover courting a fickle mistress who ever eludes his grasp?
—William Osler
Topics: Learning
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
Topics: Complaining, Acceptance
We are here not to get all we can out of life for ourselves, but to try to make the lives of others happier.
—William Osler
Topics: Happiness
Though a little one, the master-word (work) looms large in meaning. It is the open sesame to every mortal, the great equalizer in the world, the true philosopher’s stone which transmutes all the base metal of humanity into goal.
—William Osler
Topics: Work
To know just what has do be done, then to do it, comprises the whole philosophy of practical life.
—William Osler
Topics: Getting Going, Inaction, Procrastination, Decisions
Look wise say nothing and grunt, speech was given to conceal thought.
—William Osler
Topics: Speakers, Speaking
The clean tongue, the clear head, and the bright eye are birthrights of each day.
—William Osler
Topics: Day
Banish the future. Live only for the hour and its allotted work. Think not of the amount to be accomplished, the difficulties to be overcome, or the end to be attained, but set earnestly at the little task at your elbow, letting that be sufficient for the day.
—William Osler
Topics: The Present
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.
—William Osler
Topics: Truth
The good physician treats the disease; the great physician treats the patient who has the disease
—William Osler
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
There is a form of laughter that springs from the heart, heard every day in the merry voice of childhood, the expression of a laughter—loving spirit that defies analysis by the philosopher, which has nothing rigid or mechanical in it, and totally without social significance. Bubbling spontaneously from the heart of child or man. Without egotism and full of feeling, laughter is the music of life.
—William Osler
Topics: Laughter
To have striven, to have made the effort, to have been true to certain ideals—this alone is worth the struggle.
—William Osler
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
The very first step towards success in any occupation is to become interested in it.
—William Osler
Topics: Success, Secrets of Success, Vision
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