Medicine

“Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in healthcare is the most shocking and inhumane.”

“Finally, the great question would still remain whether we can really dispense with illness—even for the sake of our virtue—and whether our thirst for knowledge and self-knowledge in particular does not require the sick soul as much as the healthy, and whether, in brief, the will to health alone, is not a prejudice, cowardice, and perhaps a bit of very subtle barbarism and backwardness.”

“Skepticism in Medicine is the top stone of the science. ... It is the wisest part to regard all opinions with indifference and adopt none.”

“Anatomical drawing was at one time considered essential for both medical and art students, and while many exhibitions have explored the role of artists illustrating anatomy, it is rare to find much acknowledgment of doctors' draughtsmanship in the history of medical training.”

“A man's own observation, what he find good of, and what he finds hurt of, is the best physic to preserve health.”

“Dat Galenus opes, dat Justinianus honores,Sed genus species cogitur ire pedes.”

“'Tis not amiss, ere ye're giv'n o'er,The desp'rat'st is the wisest course.”

“Learn'd he was in medic'nal lore,That wounds nine miles point-blank would solder.”

“This is the way that physicians mend or end us, Without the least propensity to jeer.”

“Take a little rum Or at least you oughter.”

“Better to hunt in fields for health unbought,God never made his work for man to mend.”

“So liv'd our sires, ere doctors learn'd to kill,And multiplied with theirs the weekly bill.”

“Even as a Surgeon, minding off to cutTo save the whole, sawes off th' infected part.”

“For of the most High cometh healing.”

“One doctor, singly like the sculler plies,Waft him right swiftly to the Stygian shores.”

“A single doctor like a sculler plies,Conduct you soonest to the Stygian shores.”

“Oh, powerful bacillus, Watch your play.”

“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.”

“A pill that the present moment is daily bread to thousands.”

“You behold in meOr those that are called so.”

“Physician, heal thyself.”

“And in requital ope his leathern scrip,Telling their strange and vigorous faculties.”

“Adrian, the Emperor, exclaimed incessantly, when dying, "That the crowd of physicians had killed him."”

“How the Doctor's brow should smile,Crown'd with wreaths of camomile.”

“I have heard that Tiberius used to say that that man was ridiculous, who after sixty years, appealed to a physician.”

“So modern 'pothecaries, taught the artPrescribe, apply, and call their masters fools.”

“Learn from the beasts the physic of the field.”

“Who shall decide when doctors disagree,And soundest casuists doubt, like you and me?”

“Banished the doctor, and expell'd the friend.”

“You tell your doctor, that y' are illThough you recover, he must break.”

“But, when the wit began to wheeze, I died last night of my physician.”

“Physicians, of all men, are most happy: whatever good success soever they have, the world proclaimeth and what faults they commit, the earth covereth.”

“Use three Physicians,And Dr. Dyet.”

“By medicine life may be prolonged, yet deathWill seize the doctor too.”

“No cataplasm so rare,Under the moon, can save the thing from death.”

“In poison there is physic; and these news,Being sick, have in some measure made me well.”

“'Tis time to give 'em physic, their diseasesAre grown so catching.”

“* In this pointAfter his patient's death.”

“Take physic, pomp;Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel.”

“How does your patient, doctor?As she is troubled with thick-coming fancies.”

“Canst thou not minister to a mind diseas'd,Which weighs upon the heart?”

“Therein the patientThrow physic to the dogs; I'll none of it.”

“If thou couldst, doctor, castThat should applaud again.”

“In such a nightThat did renew old Æson.”

“You rub the sore,When you should bring the plaster.”

“Trust not the physician;More than you rob.”

“When I was sick, you gave me bitter pills.”

“He (Tiberius) was wont to mock at the arts of physicians, and at those who, after thirty years of age, needed counsel as to what was good or bad for their bodies.”

“But nothing is more estimable than a physician who, having studied nature from his youth, knows the properties of the human body, the diseases which assail it, the remedies which will benefit it, exercises his art with caution, and pays equal attention to the rich and the poor.”

“Our world is one of terrible contradictions. Plenty of food but one billion people go hungry. Lavish lifestyles for a few, but poverty for too many others. Huge advances in medicine while mothers die everyday in childbirth . . . Billions spent on weapons to kill people instead of keeping them safe.”

“I find the medicine worse than the malady.”

“History is replete with examples of what happens when any group of authorities do not have to answer to empirical evidence but are free to define truth as they see fit. None of the examples has a happy ending. Why should it be otherwise with therapy?”

“The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will instruct his patient in the care of the human frame, in diet and in the cause and prevention of disease.”

“The ignorance and general incompetency of the average graduate of the American medical Schools, at the time when he receives the degree which turns him loose upon the community, is something horrible to contemplate.”

“There are no longer two types of medicine, orthodox and complementary, ... There is only good medicine and bad medicine.”

“Medicine is founded upon the nature and constitution of man, physically and psychically, in all his phases of existence, and must necessarily be related to all the sciences, with scarcely an exception; since man is a microcosm of the universe, and science and philosophy are exponents of his relation thereto. This is the foundation of Aristotle's epigrammatic phrase: "The philosopher should end with medicine; the physician commence with philosophy."”

“From inability to let well alone; from too much zeal for the new and contempt for what is old; from putting knowledge before wisdom, science before art and cleverness before common sense; from treating patients as cases; and from making the cure of the disease more grievous than the endurance of the same, Good Lord, deliver us.”

“Medicine was the foster-mother of Chemistry, because it has to do with the preparation of drugs and the detection of poisons; of Botany, because it enabled the physician to recognize medicinal herbs; of Comparative Anatomy and Physiology, because the man who studied Human Anatomy and Physiology for purely medical purposes was led to extend his studies to the rest of the animal world.”

“Modern medicine is a negation of health. It isn't organised to serve human health, but only itself, as an institution. It makes more people sick than it heals.”