By Serge Marshennikov

أُمْنِيّة ظفِرَتْ روحي بها زَمَنًا
واليومَ أحسَبُها أضغاثَ أحلام

وإنْ يكُنْ فرطُ وجدي في مَحَبّتِكُمُ
إثْمًا فقد كَثُرَتْ في الحبّ آثامي

ولو علِمْتُ بأَنّ الحُبّ آخِرُهُ
هذا الحِمَامُ لَمَا خالَفتُ لُوّامي

أَودَعْتُ قلبي إلى مَن ليس يحفظُه
أبصرْتُ خلفي وما طالعتُ قدَّامي

لقد رَمَاني بسهمِ من لواحِظِهِ
أصْمى فؤادي فوا شوقي إلى الرامي

- سلطان العاشقين، ابن الفارض

Baghdad, 1906

Where in the world have there been greater follies than with the compassionate? And what in the world has caused more suffering than the follies of the compassionate?
Woe to all lovers who cannot surmount pity!
Thus spoke the Devil to me once: ‘Even God has his Hell: it is his love for man.’

- Thus Spoke Zarathustra

One should hold fast to one’s heart; for if one lets it go, how soon one loses one’s head, too!

- Thus Spoke Zarathustra

على المرء أنْ يُمسِكَ زِمامَ قلبِه؛ فالقَلبُ إنْ أُطلِقَ سراحُه، سُرعانَ ما يَهرُبُ العَقلُ مَعه.

Everyone agrees that Osler’s greatest contribution to medicine was the recognition that physicians (whether students or old timers) learn more from their observations and conversations with patients than they do from books: “Medicine is learned by the bedside and not in the classroom”, and that is why our teachers, by their own example and by the critiques of our early interviews, taught us to ask open-ended questions and to listen attentively and respectfully while patients told their stories. 

- Osler and the Way We Were Taught

The practice of medicine is an art based on science.

- Sir William Osler

سلام الله على أوسلر

Patients, as a rule, want to understand the meanings behind their illnesses “Why me?”, “Why now?”, “What lesson is this meant to teach me?”, “What did I do to deserve this?”
They hope to engage their physicians in the quest for answers, but physicians today are more interested in questions they can more easily answer: “What genes?”, “What proteins?”, and “What nerve pathways?”
Existential queries are dismissed as humanistic marginalia, no longer central, as they once were, to medical practice.

- Osler and the Way We Were Taught

إنّ الطبّ بالدرجةِ الأساس يتَعامَلُ مع المريضِ وليسَ مع المشاكلِ البيولوجية (الأمراض) بحدّ ذاتِها، لأنّ المرض لا يُصيبُ المريض على المستوى البيولوجي فقط: من وجهةِ نظر المريض، هو "عِلّة" تَعبَثُ بكيانِه كُلِّه على المستوى الإجتماعي والنفسي والمالي حتى. بكلماتٍ أُخرى: المَرَضُ مشكلةٌ وجودية، لأنّه يُسَمِّم وجودَ الإنسانِ كُلَّه.

لهذا فإنَّ الطبَ، في تعامُلِه مع المريضِ بمرضِه (البيولوجي) وعلّتِه (الوجودية) معًا، هو أيضًا مُحَمَّلٌ بكلُ أنواعِ التَبِعاتِ العِلمية والإجتماعية والأخلاقية والنفسية وحتى الفلسفية.

Variability is the law of life, and as no two faces are the same, so no two bodies are alike, and no two individuals react alike and behave alike under the abnormal conditions which we know as disease.

- Sir William Osler

The philosophies of one age have become the absurdities of the next, and the foolishness of yesterday has become the wisdom of tomorrow.

- Sir William Osler

History taking and careful observation (not laboratory results) were the authority upon which differential diagnoses and initial treatment plans were built. Laboratory tests confirmed (or not) our hypotheses, not the other way around.

- Osler and the Way We Were Taught

I almost forgot how interesting medicine is