Learn to accept in silence the minor aggravations, cultivate the gift of taciturnity, and consume your own smoke with an extra draft of hard work, so that those about you may not be annoyed with the dust and soot of your complaints.

Osler urges a disciplined, almost stoic self-management: endure petty irritations without broadcasting them, and replace habitual complaint with purposeful effort. “Consume your own smoke” frames grievance as a kind of pollution—something that, if vented, soils the shared air of a workplace or household. The counsel is not mere repression for its own sake; it is social ethics and professional demeanor, especially apt to medicine, where fatigue, frustration, and minor indignities are constant. By recommending “an extra draft of hard work,” he links emotional regulation to constructive action: convert annoyance into serviceable energy, sparing others the corrosive effects of negativity.