Work

from physician Sir William Osler’s essay, “The Master-Word in Medicine” [work]:

“Cultivate system. I say cultivate advisedly, since some of you will find the acquisition of systematic habits very hard. There are minds congenitally systematic; others have a life-long fight against an inherited tendency to diffuseness and carelessness in work.”

“No matter how trifling the matter on hand, do it with a feeling that it demands the best that is in you, and when done look it over with a critical eye, not sparing a strict judgment of yourself.”

“Years ago a sentence in one of Carlyle’s essays made a lasting impression on me: ‘Our duty is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.’ ‘Take no thought for the morrow.’ Let the day’s work suffice; live for it, regardless of what the future has in store…”

“You will have to face the ordeal of every student in this generation who sooner or later tries to mix the waters of science with the oil of faith. You can have a great deal of both if you only keep them separate. The worry comes from the attempt at mixture. As general practioners you will need all the faith you can carry, and while it may not always be of the conventional pattern, when expressed in your lives rather than on your lips, the variety is not a bad one from the standpoint of St. James.”

“A conscientious pursuit of Plato’s ideal perfection may teach you the three great lessons of life:

1. You may learn to consume your own smoke. Things cannot always go your way. Learn to accept in silence the minor aggravations.

2. We are here not to get all we can out of life for ourselves, but to try to make the lives of others happier. The practice of medicine is an art, not a trade; a calling, not a business; a calling in which your heart will be exercised equally with your head.

3. The law of the higher life is only fulfilled by love, i.e. charity.”

“You belong to the great army of quiet workers, physicians and priests, sisters and nurses, all over the world, the members of which strive not neither do they cry, nor are their voices heard in the streets, but to them is given the ministry of consolation in sorrow, need, and sickness. Like the ideal wife of whom Plutarch speaks, the best doctor is often the one of whom the public hears the least.”