William Osler Practice Quotations

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 young physician starts life with 20 drugs for each disease, and the old physician ends life with one drug for 20 diseases.

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.

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.

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.

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.