William Osler

William Osler
Sir William Osler, 1st Baronet, FRS, FRCPwas a Canadian physician and one of the four founding professors of Johns Hopkins Hospital. Osler created the first residency program for specialty training of physicians, and he was the first to bring medical students out of the lecture hall for bedside clinical training. He has frequently been described as the "Father of Modern Medicine". Osler was a person of many interests, who in addition to being a physician, was a bibliophile, historian, author,...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionDoctor
Date of Birth12 July 1849
CountryCanada
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.
The young physician starts life with 20 drugs for each disease, and the old physician ends life with one drug for 20 diseases.
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.
Now the way of life that I preach is a habit to be acquired gradually by long and steady repetition. It is the practice of living for the day only, and for the day's work.
Observe, record, tabulate, communicate. Use your five senses. Learn to see, learn to hear, learn to feel, learn to smell, and know that by practice alone you can become expert.
He who studies medicine without books sails an uncharted sea, but he who studies medicine without patients does not go to sea at all.
The search for static security - in the law and elsewhere - is misguided. The fact is security can only be achieved through constant change, adapting old ideas that have outlived their usefulness to current facts.
To know what has to be done, then do it, comprises the whole philosophy of practical life.
One finger in the throat and one in the rectum makes a good diagnostician.
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.
To die daily, after the manner of St. Paul, ensures the resurrection of a new man, who makes each day the epitome of life.
When schemes are laid in advance, it is surprising how often the circumstances fit in with them
The first duties of the physician is to educate the masses not to take medicine.
The best preparation for tomorrow is to do today's work superbly well.