William Osler

The value of experience is not in seeing much, but in seeing wisely.

— William Osler

Soap and water and common sense are the best disinfectants.

— William Osler

The good physician treats the disease; the great physician treats the patient who has the disease.

— William Osler

To study the phenomena of disease without books is to sail an uncharted sea, while to study books without patients is not to go to sea at all.

— William Osler

The best preparation for tomorrow is to do today's work superbly well.

— William Osler

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

The good physician treats the disease; the great physician treats the patient who has the disease.

— William Osler

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.

— William Osler

The philosophies of one age have become the absurdities of the next, and the foolishness of yesterday has become the wisdom of tomorrow.

— William Osler

The good physician treats the disease; the great physician treats the patient who has the disease.

— William Osler

The future is today.

— William Osler

One special advantage of the skeptical attitude of mind is that a man is never vexed to find that after all he has been in the wrong.

— William Osler

Medicine is a science of uncertainty and an art of probability.

— William Osler

We are here to add what we can to life, not to get what we can from life.

— William Osler

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.

— William Osler

Common sense in matters medical is rare, and is usually in inverse ratio to the degree of education.

— William Osler

The trained nurse has become one of the great blessings of humanity, taking a place beside the physician and the priest, and not inferior to either in her mission.

— William Osler

When schemes are laid in advance, it is surprising how often the circumstances fit in with them.

— William Osler

We can only instill principles, put the student in the right path, give him method, teach him how to study, and early to discern between essentials and non-essentials.

— William Osler

To study the phenomenon of disease without books is to sail an uncharted sea, while to study books without patients is not to go to sea at all.

— William Osler

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

Acquire the art of detachment, the virtue of method, and the quality of thoroughness, but above all the grace of humility.

— William Osler

Medicine is a science of uncertainty and an art of probability.

— William Osler

The best preparation for tomorrow is to do today's work superbly well.

— William Osler

In the history of medicine, there are few instances in which a disease has been more accurately, more graphically or more briefly described.

— William Osler

There are three classes of human beings: men, women and women physicians.

— William Osler

To have striven, to have made the effort, to have been true to certain ideals — this alone is worth the struggle.

— William Osler

One special advantage of the skeptical attitude of mind is that a man is never vexed to find that after all he has been in the wrong.

— William Osler

There seems to be no limit to the possibilities of scientific medicine, and while philanthropists are turning to it as to the hope of humanity, philosophers see, as in some far-off vision, a science from which may come in the prophetic words of the Son of Sirach, "Peace over all the earth."

— William Osler

The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism.

— 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

There is no more difficult art to acquire than the art of observation, and for some men it is quite as difficult to record an observation in brief and plain language.

— William Osler

Every one of you will have to face the ordeal of every student in this generation who sooner or later tries to mix the waters of science with the oil of faith. You can have a good deal of both if you only keep them separate. The worry comes from the attempt at mixture.

— William Osler

To have striven, to have made the effort, to have been true to certain ideals - this alone is worth the struggle.

— William Osler

Faith is indeed one of the miracles of human nature which science is as ready to accept as it is to study its marvellous effects. When we realise what a vast asset it has been in history, the part which it has played in the healing art seems insignificant, and yet there is no department of knowledge more favourable to an impartial study of its effects, and this brings me to my subject — the faith that heals.

— William Osler

Literature is full of examples of remarkable cures through the influence of the imagination, which is only an active phase of faith.

— William Osler

We are here to add what we can to, not to get what we can from, Life.

— William Osler

Humanity has but three great enemies: fever, famine, and war; of these by far the greatest, by far the most terrible, is fever.

— William Osler

Take the sum of human achievement in action, in science, in art, in literature—subtract the work of the men above forty, and while we should miss great treasures, even priceless treasures, we would practically be where we are today … The effective, moving, vitalizing work of the world is done between the ages of twenty-five and forty.

— William Osler

My second fixed idea is the uselessness of men above sixty years of age, and the incalculable benefit it would be in commercial, political, and in professional life, if as a matter of course, men stopped work at this age.

— William Osler

The desire to take medicine is perhaps the greatest feature which distinguishes man from animals.

— William Osler

A physician who treats himself has a fool for a patient.

— William Osler

One of the first duties of the physician is to educate the masses not to take medicine.

— William Osler

Soap and water and common sense are the best disinfectants.

— William Osler