I love aphorisms...and those of you with keen clinical eyesight will now see that I have a list of personal allergy aphorisms listed in the rightside menu bar of my Blog....Aphorisms give us memorable insights into the minds of others, and ideas to mull over....and it was in that spirit that I provide them...Maybe my love for aphorisms is because I was academically raised on them...while I was at the University of Iowa one of my attending physicians was the late Dr. William Bean. 

 Dr. Bean interned on the Osler service at Johns Hopkins, and he was named Sir William Osler Professor of Medicine at the University of Iowa.  One of my most treasured medical posessions is a signed textbook I received from him, entitled "Sir William Osler:  Aphorisms from his bedside teachings and writings".  These aphorisms were collected by Dr. Bean's father (Robert Bennett Bean), who was a medical student under Osler, and my attending physician William Bean edited and published them. After 30 years, I still have the textbook.  Through Dr. Bean, I felt I had a direct connection to the life of Osler--Dr. Bean stated "my memory does not go back to the time when Osler was not a household word...almost even a household god..." Dr. Bean remembered how personally devastated his family was at Osler's son's death.  And the book of Osler's aphorisms I got from Dr. Bean?  You can only imagine how they influenced my own thinking as an embryonic physician entering the grand specialty of medicine....

  ...But what about allergy?  Do we have our "own" aphorisms, written and recorded by the giants of allergy?  In truth, hardly any.  Why?  Perhaps it's because allergy is seen nowindays as a technical/immunological field...after all, how many aphorisms can you write about dust mite exposure modifying the effect of functional Il10 polymorphisms on allergy and asthma exacerbations?  In this time and age, the patient may be seen more as a complex roadmap of cytokine interactions rather than a living, breathing organism. ...I am again reminded of one of Osler's aphorisms:  

               "The greatest art is the concealment of art, and I may say that we of the medical profession excel in this respect..."

There was, however, one article on the subject I found:  "Aphorisms and Facetiae of Bela Schick, written by I.J. Wolf M.D. and published in Clinical Pediatrics, pp 495-497, 1968, subsequently made into a book.  .   Some great aphorisms abound:

               "It is too bad we cannot cut the patient in Half to compare two regimens of therapy..."

              "You can always make a theory.  In making theories, always keep a window open so that you can   throw one out if   necessary.  Twenty theories can be made in five minutes"

              "There was no diagnosis--that's what makes the case interesting"  (in responding to someone who remarked that                   a case was interesting)

               "The human body is like a bakery with a thousand windows...We are looking into only one window of the bakery  when we are investigating only one particular aspect of a disease..."

Now think about this one:  Allergy as a profession is nearly 100 years old.  We have only one article and one textbook of aphorisms about only one allergist.   Aphorisms breathe "art" into the "science" of clinical medicine.  They help us to remember what's really important in our life as clinicians.  They are an endangered species.  We must preserve them.  

Later, Dude