William Osler - Physician Quotes

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

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

William Osler
The young physician starts life with twenty drugs for each disease, and the old physician ends life with one drug for twenty diseases.

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

William Osler
If the license to practice meant the completion of his education how sad it would be for the practitioner, how distressing to his patients! More clearly than any other the physician should illustrate the truth of Plato's saying that education is a life-long process.

William Osler
The physician needs a clear head and a kind heart; his work is arduous and complex, requiring the exercise of the very highest faculties of the mind, while constantly appealing to the emotions and finer feelings.

William Osler
'Tis no idle challenge which we physicians throw out to the world when we claim that our mission is of the highest and of the noblest kind, not alone in curing disease but in educating the people in the laws of health, and in preventing the spread of plagues and pestilences...

William Osler
Every medical student should remember that his end is not to be a chemist, or a physiologist or an anatomist, but to learn how to recognize and treat disease, to become a practical physician.

William Osler
To investigate the causes of death, to examine carefully the condition of organs, after such changes have gone on in them as to render existence impossible and to apply such Knowledge to the prevention and treatment of disease, is one of the highest objects of the Physician.

William Osler
Professional chemists look askance at physiological chemistry, and physiological chemists criticize pretty sharply the work of some clinical chemists, but there can be no doubt of the value to the physicians of a very thorough training in methods and ways of organic chemistry.

William Osler
A physician who does not use books and journals, who does not need a library, who does not read one or two of the best weeklies and monthlies, soon sinks to the level of the cross-counter prescriber, and not alone in practice, but in those mercenary feelings and habits which characterize a trade...

William Osler
Permanence of residence, good undoubtedly for the pocket, is not always best for wide mental vision in the physician.

William Osler
It may be well for a physician to have pursuits outside his profession, but it is dangerous to let them become too absorbing.

William Osler
The physician without physiology and chemistry flounders along in an aimless fashion, never able to gain any accurate conception of disease, practising a sort of popgun pharmacy, hitting now the malady and again the patient, he himself not knowing which.

William Osler