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.
William OslerRead
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.
Interpretation
The importance of balancing theoretical knowledge with practical experience in medicine.
William Osler emphasizes the necessity of both studying academic literature and engaging with real patients in the field of medicine. He likens the process of learning solely from books to trying to navigate the sea without ever setting sail, highlighting that both knowledge and experience are crucial for a complete education in healthcare.
In practice
During a medical seminar, to stress the importance of hands-on training, a speaker might say this quote.
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.
There is no more difficult art to acquire than the art of observation, and for some men it is quite as difficult to record an observation in brief and plain language.
One of the first duties of the physician is to educate the masses not to take medicine.
No bubble is so iridescent or floats longer than that blown by the successful teacher.
The young physician starts life with 20 drugs for each disease, and the old physician ends life with one drug for 20 diseases.
Let each hour of the day have its allotted duty, and cultivate that power of concentration which grows with its exercise.
If we as a nation are to break the cycle of poverty, crime and the growing underclass of young people ill equipped to be productive citizens, we need to not only implement effective programs to prevent teen pregnancy, but we must also help those who have already given birth so that they become effective, nurturing, bonding parents.
The trouble with young writers is that they are all in their sixties.
If you ask a living teacher a question, he will probably answer you. If you are puzzled by what he says, you can save yourself the trouble of thinking by asking him what he means. If, however, you ask a book a question, you must answer it yourself. In this respect a book is like nature or the world. When you question it, it answers you only to the extent that you do the work of thinking an analysis yourself.
I'm a very introverted person. Nothing that's happened has changed that, but one of the reasons I write for teens is it's a real privilege to have a seat at the table in the lives of young people when they're figuring out what matters to them.
We have to allow ourselves the freedom to make mistakes, including cultural mistakes, in our first drafts. I believe it's okay to get cultural details wrong in your first draft. It's okay if stereotypes emerge. It just means that your experience is limited, that you're human.
Research shows that whether you are low-income or not, mindset is a bigger predictor of success than academic skills, and how students gain great academic skills and persevere in the face of challenges.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.