Oslerisms

To serve the art of medicine as it should be served, one must love his fellow man.

William Osler. Modern medicine, its theory and practice. 1907;(1):34
Keep a looking glass in your own heart, and the more carefully you scan your own frailties, the more tender you are for those of your fellow creatures.

Homan E quoting Sir William Osler:Teacher and bibliophile. JAMA 1969;210:2223-5
The whole art of medicine is in observation… but to educate the eye to see, the ear to hear and the finger to feel takes time, and to make a beginning, to start a man on the right path, is all that you can do.

William Osler. “The Hospital as a College” Aequanimitas. 1914:332
Learn to see, learn to hear, learn to feel, learn to smell, and know that by practice alone can you become expert.

Thayer WS quotes Osler in “Osler the Teacher” Johns Hopkins Bulletin 1919:XXX;198
Get the patient in a good light. Use your five senses. We miss more by not seeing than we do by not knowing. Always examine the back. Observe, record, tabulate, communicate.

Abbott ME. of William Osler. The pathological collections of the late Sir William Osler at McGill University. Bulletin of the International Association of Medical Museums 1926;IX: 185-199
Medicine is learned by the bedside and not in the classroom. Let not your concepts of the manifestations of disease come from words heard in the lecture room or read from the book. See, and then reason and compare and control. But see first. No two eyes see the same thing. No two mirrors give forth the same reflection. Let your word be your slave and not your master.

Thayer WS quotes Osler in “Osler the Teacher” Johns Hopkins Bulletin 1919:XXX;198
Like song that sweetens toil, laughter brightens the road of life, and to be born with the sense of comic is a precious heritage.

William Osler ‘Two Frenchman on Laughter‘, CMAJ 1912(II):152
The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism

William Osler: Aequanimitas ‘Chauvanism in Medicine’ 1914:301
The young doctor should look about early for an avocation, a pastime, that will take him away from patients, pills, and potions…

William Osler: Aequanimitas ‘After 25 years’ 1914:212
By far the most dangerous foe we have to fight is apathy – indifference from whatever cause, not from a lack of knowledge, but from carelessness, from absorption in other pursuits, from a contempt bred of self satisfaction.

William Osler: Aequanimitas ‘Unity, Peace and Concord’ 1914:457