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Home > Dictionary of Science Quotations > Scientist Names Index B > Theodor Billroth Quotes

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Theodor Billroth
(26 Apr 1829 - 6 Feb 1894)

German surgeon who was a pioneer in certain surgical techniques, including plastic surgery of the face. As an amateur musician, he was a friend of Johannes Brahms, who dedicated two string quartets to him.


Science Quotes by Theodor Billroth (1 quote)

It is a most gratifying sign of the rapid progress of our time that our best text-books become antiquated so quickly.
— Theodor Billroth
The Medical Sciences in the German Universities (1924), 49.
Science quotes on:  |  Become (821)  |  Best (467)  |  Book (413)  |  Most (1728)  |  Progress (492)  |  Time (1911)



Quotes by others about Theodor Billroth (1)

That ability to impart knowledge … what does it consist of? … a deep belief in the interest and importance of the thing taught, a concern about it amounting to a sort of passion. A man who knows a subject thoroughly, a man so soaked in it that he eats it, sleeps it and dreams it—this man can always teach it with success, no matter how little he knows of technical pedagogy. That is because there is enthusiasm in him, and because enthusiasm is almost as contagious as fear or the barber’s itch. An enthusiast is willing to go to any trouble to impart the glad news bubbling within him. He thinks that it is important and valuable for to know; given the slightest glow of interest in a pupil to start with, he will fan that glow to a flame. No hollow formalism cripples him and slows him down. He drags his best pupils along as fast as they can go, and he is so full of the thing that he never tires of expounding its elements to the dullest.
This passion, so unordered and yet so potent, explains the capacity for teaching that one frequently observes in scientific men of high attainments in their specialties—for example, Huxley, Ostwald, Karl Ludwig, Virchow, Billroth, Jowett, William G. Sumner, Halsted and Osler—men who knew nothing whatever about the so-called science of pedagogy, and would have derided its alleged principles if they had heard them stated.
In Prejudices: third series (1922), 241-2.
For a longer excerpt, see H.L. Mencken on Teaching, Enthusiasm and Pedagogy.
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  • 26 Apr - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of Billroth's birth.

Carl Sagan Thumbnail In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. (1987) -- Carl Sagan
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