Let the young know they will never find a more interesting, more instructive book than the patient himself.
—Giorgio Baglivi, c. 1696Quotes
To be sick is to enjoy monarchal prerogatives.
—Charles Lamb, 1833The doctor occupies a seat in the front row of the stalls of the human drama, and is constantly watching and even intervening in the tragedies, comedies, and tragicomedies which form the raw material of the literary art.
—W. Russell Brain, 1952There must be quite a few things a hot bath won’t cure, but I don’t know many of them.
—Sylvia Plath, 1963A miracle drug is any drug that will do what the label says it will do.
—Eric Hodgins, 1964It is not a case we are treating; it is a living, palpitating, alas, too often suffering fellow creature.
—John Brown, 1904No families take so little medicine as those of doctors, except those of apothecaries.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1860The only places where American medicine can fully live up to its possibilities are the teaching hospitals.
—Bernard De Voto, 1951Because the newer methods of treatment are good, it does not follow that the old ones were bad: for if our honorable and worshipful ancestors had not recovered from their ailments, you and I would not be here today.
—Confucius, c. 515 BCHe is the best physician who is the most ingenious inspirer of hope.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1833Be temperate in wine, in eating, girls, and sloth, or the Gout will seize you.
—Benjamin Franklin, 1734When the physician said to him, “You have lived to be an old man,” he said, “That is because I never employed you as my physician.”
—Pausanias, c. 450 BCI have yet, I believe, some years in store, for I have a good state of health and a happy mind, and I take care of both by nourishing the first with temperance and the latter with abundance. This, I believe, you will allow to be the true philosophy of life.
—Thomas Paine, 1803