Osler shared one of these special events, "In the summer of 1871, when I was attending the Montreal General Hospital, much worried as to the future, partly about the final examination, partly as to what I should do afterwards, I picked up a volume of Carlysle, and on the page I opened there was the familiar sentence, 'Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand,'--the starting point of a habit that has enabled me to utilize to the full the single talent entrusted to me."
Osler continued to expand his ideas of discipline and persistence with, "To live with day-tight compartments as the most certain way to ensure safety on the voyage, as a great oceanliner, to shut out the past, bury the sins and disappointments at night--don't be Lot's wife... Many a man is handicapped in his course by a cursed combination of retro-and introspection. The mistakes of yesterday paralyzing the efforts of today..."
He then mentions the dangers of tomorrow and the future as hindrances for the medical students, "The tomorrow that so plagues some of us has no certainty, except through today...--The future is today. There is no tomorrow. Now for the day itself; what first? Beware of the lady Nicotine, or fooling with Bacchus or with young Aphrodite-all messengers of strong prevailment in unhardened youth,"--tobacco, alcohol or sexual exploits and promiscuity.
He urges us to begin the day with primal habits, and in his experience, "Failure to cultivate the power of peaceful concentration 'is the greatest single cause of mental breakdown... A few hours out of the sixteen will suffice, only let them be hours of daily dedication--in routine, in order, and in system; and day by day, you will gain in power over the mental mechanisms, just as the child does over the spinal marrow in walking, or the musician over the nerve centers...and once the mental habit is established, you
