All pain is one malady with many names.
—Antiphanes, c. 400 BCQuotes
The poets did well to conjoin music and medicine, because the office of medicine is but to tune the curious harp of man’s body.
—Francis Bacon, 1605The 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, 1952A miracle drug is any drug that will do what the label says it will do.
—Eric Hodgins, 1964No families take so little medicine as those of doctors, except those of apothecaries.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1860To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.
—Oscar Wilde, 1891In the name of Hippocrates doctors have invented the most exquisite form of torture ever known to man: survival.
—Luis Buñuel, 1983The doctor should be opaque to his patients and, like a mirror, should show them nothing but what is shown to him.
—Sigmund Freud, 1912Well now, there’s a remedy for everything except death.
—Miguel de Cervantes, 1605Physician, 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. 1884Because 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 BCDoctors don’t know everything really. They understand matter, not spirit. And you and I live in spirit.
—William Saroyan, 1943The best physician is he who can distinguish the possible from the impossible.
—Herophilus, c. 290 BC