William Osler Disease Quotations

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.

Few diseases present greater difficulties in the way of diagnosis than malignant endocarditis, difficulties which in many cases are practi- cally insurmountable. It is no disparagement to the many skilled physicians who have put their cases upon record to say that, in fully one-half the diagnosis was made post mortem.

Jaundice is the disease that your friends diagnose.

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

Medicine is learned by the bedside and not in the classroom. Let not your conceptions 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.

There is no disease more conducive to clinical humility than aneurysm of the aorta.

Patients rarely die of the disease from which they suffer. Secondary or terminal infections are the real cause of death.

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

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