Physician, heal yourself: thus you help your patient too. Let his best help be to see with his own eyes the man who makes himself well.
—Friedrich Nietzsche, c. 1884Quotes
Let me recommend the best medicine in the world: a long journey, at a mild season, through a pleasant country, in easy stages.
—James Madison, 1794A miracle drug is any drug that will do what the label says it will do.
—Eric Hodgins, 1964He is the best physician who is the most ingenious inspirer of hope.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1833It is not a case we are treating; it is a living, palpitating, alas, too often suffering fellow creature.
—John Brown, 1904The doctor should be opaque to his patients and, like a mirror, should show them nothing but what is shown to him.
—Sigmund Freud, 1912There must be quite a few things a hot bath won’t cure, but I don’t know many of them.
—Sylvia Plath, 1963To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.
—Oscar Wilde, 1891Doctors don’t know everything really. They understand matter, not spirit. And you and I live in spirit.
—William Saroyan, 1943Health indeed is a precious thing, to recover and preserve which we undergo any misery, drink bitter potions, freely give our goods—restore a man to his health, his purse lies open to thee.
—Robert Burton, 1621No families take so little medicine as those of doctors, except those of apothecaries.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1860When 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 BCThe only places where American medicine can fully live up to its possibilities are the teaching hospitals.
—Bernard De Voto, 1951