Doctor Quotes by William Osler

Listen to your patient, he is telling you the diagnosis,

— William Osler

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

— William Osler

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

— William Osler

Jaundice is the disease that your friends diagnose.

— William Osler

Beware of people who call you 'Doc.' They rarely pay their bills.

— William Osler

He who knows syphilis knows medicine

— William Osler

“Ask not what disease the person has, but rather what person the disease has”

— William Osler

The young doctor should look about early for an avocation, a pastime, that will take him away from patients, pills, and potions…

— William Osler

A well-trained, sensible doctor is one of the most valuable assets of a community.

— William Osler

We doctors have always been a simple trusting folk. Did we not believe Galen implicitly for 1500 years and Hippocrates for more than 2000?

— William Osler

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

— William Osler

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

— William Osler

If it were not for the great variability among individuals, medicine might as well be a science, not an art.

— William Osler

“It is much more important to know what sort of patient has a disease than what sort of disease a patient has.”

— William Osler

It is not as if our homeopathic brothers are asleep: far from it, they are awake - many of them at any…

— William Osler

The practice of medicine is an art, not a trade; a calling, not a business; a calling in which your heart will…

— William Osler

There are, in truth, no specialties in medicine, since to know fully many of the most important diseases a man must be…

— William Osler

Now of the difficulties bound up with the public in which we doctors work, I hesitate to speak in a mixed audience.…

— William Osler

Medicine is learned by the bedside and not in the classroom. Let not your conceptions of disease come from words heard in…

— William Osler

Care more for the individual patient than for the special features of the disease. . . . Put yourself in his place…

— William Osler

The practice of medicine is an art, not a trade; a calling, not a business; a calling in which your heart will…

— William Osler

Few diseases present greater difficulties in the way of diagnosis than malignant endocarditis, difficulties which in many cases are practi- cally insurmountable.…

— William Osler

The practice of medicine will be very much as you make it - to one a worry, a care, a perpetual annoyance;…

— William Osler

To have a group of cloistered clinicians away completely from the broad current of professional life would be bad for teacher and…

— William Osler

“We may indeed be justly proud of our apostolic succesion. THESE ARE OUR METHODS - to carefully observe the phenomena of life…

— William Osler

There are only two sorts of doctors; those who practise with their brains, and those who practise with their tongues.

— William Osler

The person who takes medicine must recover twice, once from the disease and once from the medicine.

— William Osler

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

— William Osler

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

— William Osler