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In nothing do men more nearly
approach the gods than in giving health to men. — Cicero
My doctor is nice; every time I see him, I'm ashamed of what I think
of doctors in general. — Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's
Notebook, 1966
The greatest mistake in the treatment of diseases is that there are
physicians for the body and physicians for the soul, although the
two cannot be separated. — Plato
Body and soul cannot be separated for purposes of treatment, for
they are one and indivisible. Sick minds must be healed as well as
sick bodies. — C. Jeff Miller
In the sick room, ten cents' worth of human understanding equals ten
dollars' worth of medical science. — Martin H. Fischer
It is a mathematical fact that fifty percent of all doctors graduate
in the bottom half of their class. — Author Unknown
Restore a man to his health, his purse lies open to thee. — Robert
Burton
I got the bill for my surgery. Now I know what those doctors were
wearing masks for. — James H. Boren
A hospital should also have a recovery room adjoining the cashier's
office. — Francis O'Walsh
Did God who gave us flowers and trees,
Also provide the allergies?
— E.Y. Harburg, "A Nose Is a Nose Is a Nose," 1965
I learned a long time ago that minor surgery is when they do the
operation on someone else, not you. — Bill Walton
It is a wise mans part, rather to avoid sickness, than to wishe for
medicines. — Thomas More, Utopia [sic]
I wondher why ye can always read a doctor's bill an' ye niver can
read his purscription. — Finley Peter Dunne
You have a cough? Go home tonight, eat a whole box of Ex-Lax -
tomorrow you'll be afraid to cough. — Pearl Williams
To array a man's will against his sickness is the supreme art of
medicine. — Henry Ward Beecher
A doctor whose breath smells has no right to medical opinion. —
Martin H. Fischer
Surgeons must be very careful
When they take the knife!
Underneath their fine incisions
Stirs the Culprit - Life!
— Emily Dickinson
It is a good thing for a physician to have prematurely grey hair and
itching piles. The first makes him appear to know more than he does,
and the second gives him an expression of concern which the patient
interprets as being on his behalf. — A. Benson Cannon
A doctor who cannot take a good history and a patient who cannot
give one are in danger of giving and receiving bad treatment. —
Author Unknown
One thousand Americans stop smoking every day - by dying. — Author
Unknown
A hypochondriac is one who has a pill for everything except what
ails him. — Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966
The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature
cures the disease. — Voltaire
A doctor must work eighteen hours a day and seven days a week. If
you cannot console yourself to this, get out of the profession. —
Martin H. Fischer
It is sometimes as dangerous to be run into by a microbe as by a
trolley car. — J.J. Walsh
Every disease is a physician. — Irish Proverb
God heales, and the Physitian hath the thankes. — George Herbert,
Outlandish Proverbs
Drugs are not always necessary. Belief in recovery always is. —
Norman Cousins
I firmly believe that if the whole materia medica could be sunk to
the bottom of the sea, it would be all the better for mankind and
all the worse for the fishes. — Oliver Wendell Holmes
There is no curing a sick man who believes himself to be in health.
— Henri Amiel
Doctors think a lot of patients are cured who have simply quit in
disgust. — Don Herold
The only equipment lack in the modern hospital? Somebody to meet you
at the entrance with a handshake! — Martin H. Fischer
The worst thing about medicine is that one kind makes another
necessary. — Elbert Hubbard
When you are called to a sick man, be sure you know what the matter
is - if you do not know, nature can do a great deal better than you
can guess. — Nicholas de Belleville
Throw physic to the dogs; I'll none of it. — William Shakespeare
I recently became a Christian Scientist. It was the only health plan
I could afford. — Betsy Salkind
Poisons and medicine are oftentimes the same substance given with
different intents. — Peter Mere Latham
In the nineteenth century men lost their fear of God and acquired a
fear of microbes. — Author Unknown
Symptoms, then are in reality nothing but the cry from suffering
organs. — Jean Martin Charcot, translated from French
I never read a patent medicine advertisement without being impelled
to the conclusion that I am suffering from the particular disease
therein dealt with in its most virulent form. — Jerome K. Jerome,
Three Men in a Boat
Diagnosis is not the end, but the beginning of practice. — Martin H.
Fischer
The physician should look upon the patient as a besieged city and
try to rescue him with every means that art and science place at his
command. — Alexander of Tralles
Physicians and politicians resemble one another in this respect,
that some defend the constitution and others destroy it. — Author
Unknown
A smart mother makes often a better diagnosis than a poor doctor. —
August Bier
When fate arrives the physician becomes a fool. — Arabic Proverb
Medicines are not meat to live by. — German Proverb
Treat the patient, not the Xray. — James M. Hunter
God and the Doctor we alike adore
But only when in danger, not before;
The danger o'er, both are alike requited,
God is forgotten, and the Doctor slighted.
— Robert Owen
Financial ruin from medical bills is almost exclusively an American
disease. — Roul Turley
The hospital is the only proper College in which to rear a true
disciple of Aesculapius. — John Abernethy
A man who cannot work without his hypodermic needle is a poor
doctor. The amount of narcotic you use is inversely proportional to
your skill. — Martin H. Fischer
Better to hunt in fields, for health unbought,
Than fee the doctor for a nauseous draught,
The wise, for cure, on exercise depend;
God never made his work for man to mend.
— John Dryden
Medicine is the only profession that labours incessantly to destroy
the reason for its own existence. — James Bryce, 1914
It is not a case we are treating; it is a living, palpitating, alas,
too often suffering fellow creature. — John Brown
The patient does not care about your science; what he wants to know
is, can you cure him? — Martin H. Fischer
Medicines heals doubts as well as diseases. — Karl Marx
A physician is obligated to consider more than a diseased organ,
more even than the whole man - he must view the man in his world. —
Harvey Cushing
Medicine sometimes snatches away health, sometimes gives it. — Ovid,
Tristia
As it takes two to make a quarrel, so it takes two to make a
disease, the microbe and its host. — Charles V. Chapin
Disease is war with the laws of our being, and all war, as a great
general has said, is hell. — Lewis G. Janes
Until a physician has killed one or two he is not a physician. —
Kashmiri Proverb
No man is a good doctor who has never been sick himself. — Chinese
Proverb
Only one rule in medical ethics need concern you - that action on
your part which best conserves the interests of your patient. —
Martin H. Fischer
To me the ideal doctor would be a man endowed with profound
knowledge of life and of the soul, intuitively divining any
suffering or disorder of whatever kind, and restoring peace by his
mere presence. — Henri Amiel
Medicinal discovery,
It moves in mighty leaps,
It leapt straight past the common cold
And give it us for keeps.
— Pam Ayres
When you no longer know what headache, heartache, or stomachache
means without cistern punctures, electrocardiograms and six x-ray
plates, you are slipping. — Martin H. Fischer
It is easy to get a thousand prescriptions but hard to get one
single remedy. — Chinese Proverb
Never forget that it is not a pneumonia, but a pneumonic man who is
your patient. — William Withey Gull
It is said to be the manner of hypochondriacs to change often their
physician. — William Cullen, Practice of Physic
The road to medical knowledge is through the pathological museum and
not through an apothecary's shop. — William Withey Gull
A Short History of Medicine
2000 B.C. - "Here, eat this root."
1000 B.C. - "That root is heathen, say this prayer."
1850 A.D. - "That prayer is superstition, drink this potion."
1940 A.D. - "That potion is snake oil, swallow this pill."
1985 A.D. - "That pill is ineffective, take this antibiotic."
2000 A.D. - "That antibiotic is artificial. Here, eat this root."
— Author Unknown
When a lot of remedies are suggested for a disease, that means it
cannot be cured. — Anton Chekhov, The Cherry Orchard
A half doctor near is better than a whole one far away. — German
Proverb
No doctor is better than three. — German Proverb
I will lift mine eyes unto the pills. Almost everyone takes them,
from the humble aspirin to the multi-coloured, king-sized three
deckers, which put you to sleep, wake you up, stimulate and soothe
you all in one. It is an age of pills. — Malcolm Muggeridge, 1962
Man may be the captain of his fate, but is also the victim of his
blood sugar. — Wilfrid G. Oakley
Faith and knowledge lean largely upon each other in the practice of
medicine. — Peter Mere Latham
Each patient ought to feel somewhat the better after the physician's
visit, irrespective of the nature of the illness. — Warfield
Theobald Longcope
Who ever thought up the word "Mammogram?" Every time I hear it, I
think I'm supposed to put my breast in an envelope and send it to
someone. — Jan King
Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died. — Erma Bombeck
You may know the intractability of a disease by its long list of
remedies. — Alonzo Clark
Here's good advice for practice: go into partnership with nature;
she does more than half the work and asks none of the fee. — Martin
H. Fischer
Varicose veins are the result of an improper selection of
grandparents. — William Osler
If you are too smart to pay the doctor, you had better be too smart
to get ill. — African Proverb
When you treat a disease, first treat the mind. — Chen Jen
Symptoms are the body's mother tongue; signs are in a foreign
language. — John Brown
The doctor of the future will give no medicine but will interest his
patients in the care of the human frame, in diet and in the cause
and prevention of disease. — Thomas Edison
Oh the powers of nature. She knows what we need, and the doctors
know nothing. — Benvenuto Cellini
So many come to the sickroom thinking of themselves as men of
science fighting disease and not as healers with a little knowledge
helping nature to get a sick man well. — Auckland Geddes, The
Practitioner
Where a man feels pain he lays his hand. — Dutch Proverb
The doctor is often more to be feared than the disease. — French
Proverb
Despite all our toil and progress, the art of medicine still falls
somewhere between trout casting and spook writing. — Ben Hecht,
Miracle of the Fifteen Murderers
The Lord hath created medicines out of the earth; and he that is
wise will not abhor them. — Ecclesiasticus 38:4
A drug is that substance which, when injected into a rat, will
produce a scientific report. — Author Unknown
Cancer is a word, not a sentence. — John Diamond
The medicalization of early diagnosis not only hampers and
discourages preventative health-care but it also trains the
patient-to-be to function in the meantime as an acolyte to his
doctor. He learns to depend on the physician in sickness and in
health. He turns into a life-long patient. — Ivan Illich
Patients may recover in spite of drugs or because of them. — J.H.
Gaddum
He's the best physician that knows the worthlessness of the most
medicines. — Benjamin Franklin
Physiology is the stepchild of medicine. That is why Cinderella
often turns out the queen. — Martin H. Fischer
The field of Western medicine has become literally nothing but
medicine. Doctors are on their way out, to be replaced by self-serve
pharmaceutical vending machines. — Grey Livingston
The fact that your patient gets well does not prove that your
diagnosis was correct. — Samuel J. Meltzer
Man is a creature composed of countless millions of cells: a microbe
is composed of only one, yet throughout the ages the two have been
in ceaseless conflict. — A.B. Christie
Our profession is the only one which works unceasingly to annihilate
itself. — Martin H. Fischer
On J-Day our profession will have a lot to answer for! We might at
least have withheld our hands instead of making them work against
God. — Martin H. Fischer
The doctor may also learn more about the illness from the way the
patient tells the story than from the story itself. — James B.
Herrick
Don't think of organ donations as giving up part of yourself to keep
a total stranger alive. It's really a total stranger giving up
almost all of themselves to keep part of you alive. — Author Unknown
Most of those evils we poor mortals know
From doctors and imagination flow.
— Charles Churchill
Men are not going to embrace eugenics. They are going to embrace the
first likely, trim-figured girl with limpid eyes and flashing teeth
who comes along, in spite of the fact that her germ plasm is
probably reeking with hypertension, cancer, haemophilia, colour
blindness, hay fever, epilepsy, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. —
Logan Clendening
Don't take your organs to heaven with you. Heaven knows we need them
here. — Author unknown, attributed to both Dan and Barbara Hladio
and Thomas Boyadjis, Sr.
'Tis not always in a physician's power to cure the sick; at times
the disease is stronger than trained art. — Ovid
And lo, The Hospital, grey, quiet, old, Where Life and Death like
friendly chafferers meet. — William Ernest Henley
For the most part, Western medicine doctors are not healers,
preventers, listeners, or educators. But they're damned good at
saving a life and the other aspects kick the beam. It's about time
we brought some balance back to the scale. — Claire Todae
A sweating ovary or a sick prostate explains most history. — Martin
H. Fischer
The only weapon with which the unconscious patient can immediately
retaliate upon the incompetent surgeon is hemorrhage. — William
Stewart Halsted
The public blabbers about preventative medicine, but will neither
appreciate nor pay for it. You get paid for what you cure. — Martin
H. Fischer
To save a man's life against his will is the same as killing him. —
Horace
Nowadays the clinical history too often weighs more than the man. —
Martin H. Fischer
Hypochondriacs squander large sums of time in search of nostrums by
which they vainly hope they may get more time to squander. —
Mortimer Collins
One doctor makes work for another. — English Proverb
Doctors are just the same as lawyers; the only difference is that
lawyers merely rob you, whereas doctors rob you and kill you, too. —
Anton Chekhov, Ivanov
Let the young know they will never find a more interesting, more
instructive book than the patient himself. — Giorgio Baglivi
Formerly, when religion was strong and science weak, men mistook
magic for medicine; now, when science is strong and religion weak,
men mistake medicine for magic. — Thomas Szasz, The Second Sin, 1973
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Quotations on Medical Subjects