Osler: “A Way of Life’

 Sir William Osler was a teacher of physicians in an era when the profession was being re-established by scientists. Osler taught the new methods, based on experiment and clinical trials. But he thought that a medical education required more than technical competence.

The practice of medicine, then as now, was not an exact science. Patients would die despite a doctor’s best efforts. Sometimes the best doctors would make mistakes.

A medical education needed to face those facts, and so Osler urged his students to live life in day-tight compartments. Osler borrowed the metaphor from sailors. When a warship is at sea, each watertight compartment is sealed off. If a torpedo strikes, the sea floods one compartment — not the entire ship. The ship sails on.

Osler urged his students not to get too high with any day’s success or too low at any day’s failure. He urged them not to let the evils of the past spill over to the next day. Likewise, he urged them not to spend the good day before them dreaming of what might be in the future.

I’ve been thinking about people who have practices — small habits that somehow add up to a distinctive way of life. Osler strikes me is a fine teacher of practices and practitioners. He was also a fine essayist, and I wish I’d read his “A Way of Life” before I thought about college.

Osler recommended two other practices that I admire:

He urged his students to spend some time, but not the whole day, in silent concentration. He quoted Goethe’s line: A talent forms itself in silence.

He also urged his students to spend some part of the day with the best literature of the world. Your soul is dyed by your thoughts, he said, so choose the writers you read wisely.

• Source and notes: Sir William Osler, Osler’s “A Way of Life” & Other Addresses with Commentary & Annotations, ed. by Hisae Niki, Shigeaki Hinohara and Sigeaki Hinohara; Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2001. For another note on Osler, see “A physician talks of habits,” June 3, 2023.