One of the first essentials in securing a good-natured equanimity is not to expect too much of the people amongst whom you dwell. - William Osler

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

Surrounded by people who demand certainty, — and not philosopher enough to agree with Locke that "Probability supplies the defect of our knowledge and guides us when that fails, and is always conversant about things of which we have no certainty," the practitioner too often gets into a habit of mind which resents the thought that opinion, not full knowledge, must be his stay and prop. There is no discredit, though there is at times much discomfort, in this everlasting perhaps with which we have to preface so much connected with the practice of our art. It is, as I said, inherent in the subject.

if oxen and lions and horses had hands and could draw, they would represent their gods as oxen and lions and horses.