Academic Development

A Quote from Teacher and Students

Dr. William Osler speaking to medical students at the University of Minnesota (1892)

"Ask of any active business man or a leader in a profession the secret which enables him to accomplish much work, and he will reply in one word, system; or as I shall term it, the Virtue of Method, the harness without which only the horses of genius travel. There are two aspects of this subject; the first relates to the orderly arrangement of your work, which is to some extent enforced by the roster of demonstrations and lectures, but this you would do well to supplement in private study by a schedule in which each hour finds its allotted duty. Thus faithfully followed day by day system may become at last engrained in the most shiftless nature, and at the end of a semester a youth of moderate ability may find himself far in advance of the student who works spasmodically, and trusts to cramming. Priceless as this virtue is now in the time of your probation, it becomes in the practicing physician an incalculable blessing. The incessant and irregular demands upon a busy doctor make it very difficult to retain, but the public in this matter can be educated, and the men who practice with system, allotting a definite time of the day to certain work, accomplish much more and have at any rate a little leisure; while those who are unmethodical never catch up the day's duties and worry themselves, their confreres, and their patients."

OSLER, Aequanimitas with Other Addresses

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