Frasi di William Osler

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“Colui che conosce la sifilide, conosce la medicina.”

“I pazienti dovrebbero avere riposo, cibo, aria fresca ed esercizio fisico: il quadrangolo della salute.”

“Il desiderio di prendere medicine è forse la grande caratteristica che differenzia l'uomo dagli altri animali.”

“L'itterizia è quella malattia che può essere diagnosticata dai propri amici.”

“La dissenteria per gli eserciti è stata più fatale della polvere da sparo e delle pallottole.”

“Nei bollettini dei decessi, la polmonite è agevolmente al secondo posto, dopo la tubercolosi; anzi in molte città il tasso mortalità è ora più alto e la polmonite è diventata, usando una frase di Bunyan, "il capitano degli uomini della morte.”

“Un medico che curi se stesso ha un matto per paziente.”

“Uno dei primi doveri del medico è educare le masse a non prendere medicine.”

“Literature is full of examples of remarkable cures through the influence of the imagination, which is only an active phase of faith.”

“To have striven, to have made the effort, to have been true to certain ideals — this alone is worth the struggle.”

“Variability is the law of life, and as no two faces are the same, so no two bodies are alike, and no two individuals react alike and behave alike under the abnormal conditions which we know as disease.”

“When schemes are laid in advance, it is surprising how often the circumstances fit in with them.”

“My second fixed idea is the uselessness of men above sixty years of age, and the incalculable benefit it would be in commercial, political, and in professional life, if as a matter of course, men stopped work at this age.”

“We can only instill principles, put the student in the right path, give him method, teach him how to study, and early to discern between essentials and non-essentials.”

“To study the phenomenon of disease without books is to sail an uncharted sea, while to study books without patients is not to go to sea at all.”

“No human being is constituted to know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; and even the best of men must be content with fragments, with partial glimpses, never the full fruition.”

“The desire to take medicine is perhaps the greatest feature which distinguishes man from animals.”

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

“Take the sum of human achievement in action, in science, in art, in literature—subtract the work of the men above forty, and while we should miss great treasures, even priceless treasures, we would practically be where we are today … The effective, moving, vitalizing work of the world is done between the ages of twenty-five and forty.”

“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.”

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

“One special advantage of the skeptical attitude of mind is that a man is never vexed to find that after all he has been in the wrong.”

“There seems to be no limit to the possibilities of scientific medicine, and while philanthropists are turning to it as to the hope of humanity, philosophers see, as in some far-off vision, a science from which may come in the prophetic words of the Son of Sirach, "Peace over all the earth."”

“Shakespeare gets to the root of the alcohol question in his well-known statement—'Good wine is a good, familiar creature if it be well used.”

“In the history of medicine, there are few instances in which a disease has been more accurately, more graphically or more briefly described.”

“Soap and water and common sense are the best disinfectants.”

“While in general use for centuries, one good result of the recent development of mental healing has been to call attention to its great value as a measure to be carefully and scientifically applied in suitable cases. My experience has been that of the unconscious rather than the deliberate faith healer. Phenomenal, even what could be called miraculous, cures are not very uncommon. Like others, I have had cases any one of which, under suitable conditions, could have been worthy of a shrine or made the gem of a pilgrimage.”