MEDICAL MATTERS: It being the day after a bank holiday weekend, the tradition of this column is to introduce a lighter note.
Today is not the day for polemic or a heavy duty medical topics. However, rather than devote the column to the latest in medical humour, I hope readers will appreciate a series of quotes and aphorisms from one of the best ever medical teachers.
Sir William Osler (1849 - 1919) is regarded by many as the pre-eminent physician of the 20th century. He taught his students to be compassionate; as an educator, he revolutionised clinical teaching.
Born in Ontario, Canada, Osler was the son of a clergyman. He initially followed in his fathers footsteps at Trinity College, Toronto, but switched to medicine in his second year. Osler finished his studies at McGill University School of Medicine in Montreal. After graduating in 1872, he departed on what was then the traditional route for a North American graduate: a sort of "grand tour" of hospitals and laboratories in London, Berlin and Vienna.
Back at his alma mater in Montreal, he was appointed professor at McGill. In 1884 he moved to the US as professor of clinical medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. But it was at the newly formed Johns Hopkins Hospital and Medical School that he settled and here Osler seized the opportunity to establish new standards for the teaching of medicine in the US. In 1905, he accepted the Regius professorship of medicine at Oxford University, where he spent the rest of his years.
Osler left a huge written legacy of more than 1600 papers, essays and books. Laced with principles and precepts written in an aphoristic style, he has influenced generations of doctors. I picked up a copy of The Quotable Osler in the US recently. Here is just a small selection of the bon-mots and axioms from it.
On humanity: "In these days of aggressive self-assertion, when the stress of competition is so keen and the desire to make the most of oneself so universal, it may seem a little old-fashioned to preach the necessity of this virtue, but I insist for its own sake, and for the sake of what it brings, that a due humility should take the place of honour on the list."
On maintaining a good humour: "Hilarity and good humour, a breezy cheerfulness, a nature 'sloping towards the southern side', as James Russell Lowell has it, help enormously both in the study and the practice of medicine. To many of the sombre and sour disposition it is hard to maintain good spirits amid the trials and tribulations of the day, and yet it is an unpardonable mistake to go about among people with a long face."
The wisdom of tomorrow is the foolishness of yesterday: "The philosophies of one age have become the absurdities of the next, and the foolishness of yesterday has become the wisdom of tomorrow."
Do not take away hope from the patient: "What is your duty in the matter of telling a patient that he is probably the subject of an incurable disease?... One thing is certain; it is not for you to don the black cap and, assuming the judicial function, take hope from any patient - hope that comes to all."
Don't take yourself or others seriously: "But whatever you do, take neither yourselves nor your fellow-creatures too seriously. There is tragedy enough in our daily routine, but there is room too for a keen sense of the absurdities and incongruities of life, and in the shifting panorama no one sees better than the doctor the perennial sameness of men's ways."
On our fondness for medicines: "Man has an inborn craving for medicine... the desire to take medicine is one feature which distinguishes man, the animal, from his fellow creatures."
As an advocate of the plain language of healing he wrote: "And from the standpoint of medicine as an art for the prevention and cure of disease; the man who translates the hieroglyphics of science into the plain language of healing is certainly the more useful."
Take pride in caring for the poor: "In nothing should the citizens of a town take greater pride than a well established, comfortable Hotel Dieu - God's Hostelry - in which his poor are healed."
Finally Osler's view of the effects of tobacco were certainly prescient: "A bitter enemy to the bright eye and the clear brain of the early morning is tobacco when smoked to excess... Watch it, test it, and if need be, control it. That befogged, woolly sensation reaching from the forehead to the occiput, that haziness of memory, that cold fishlike eye. that furred tongue, and last week's taste in the mouth - they often come from too much tobacco."
Dr Muiris Houston is pleased to hear from readers at mhouston@irish-times.ie but regrets he cannot answer individual queries.