Aequanimitas

William Osler's most famous essay was titled "Aequanimitas" on the importance of imperturbability.

"In the first place, in the physician or surgeon no quality takes rank with imperturbability, and I propose for a few minutes to direct your attention to this essential bodily virtue. Perhaps I may be able to give those of you, in whom it has not developed during the critical scenes of the past month, a hint or two of its importance, possibly a suggestion for its attainment. Imperturbability means coolness and presence of mind under all circumstances, calmness amid storm, clearness of judgment in moments of grave peril, immobility, impassiveness, or, to use an old and expressive word, phlegm. It is the quality which is most appreciated by the laity though often misunderstood by them; and the physician who has the misfortune to be without it, who betrays indecision and worry, and who shows that he is flustered and flurried in ordinary emergencies, loses rapidly the confidence of his patients...

A distressing feature in the life which you are about to enter, a feature which will press hardly upon the finer spirits among you and ruffle their equanimity, is the uncertainty which pertains not alone to our science and arts but to the very hopes and fears which make us men. In seeking absolute truth we aim at the unattainable, and must be content with finding broken portions. You remember in the Egyptian story, how Typhon with his conspirators dealt with good Osiris; how they took the virgin Truth, hewed her lovely form into a thousand pieces, and scattered them to the four winds; and, as Milton says, "from that time ever since, the sad friends of truth, such as durst appear, imitating the careful search that Isis made for the mangled body of Osiris, went up and down gathering up limb by limb still as they could find them; We have not yet found them all," but each one of us may pick up a fragment, perhaps two, and in moments when mortality weighs less heavily upon the spirit, we can, as in a vision, see the form divine..."

I pondered on this essay today, on a day of transition from medicine internship and anesthesia residency. While I would not say that imperturbability is the utmost virtue of a physician, I see its qualities and they fit that of an anesthesiologist; we have to, in rapidly changing, critical situations, remain calm and even-headed. Everyone looks to the captain who, in the raging storm, carefully guides the ship home. I also really like the second quoted paragraph because residency thus far has taught me that we know little about the human body, health, and disease. There is a long way to go and through this journey we may pick up on small slivers of truth here and there, and it is our job as a profession to try to make sense of these pieces.