How many desolate creatures on the earth have learnt the simple dues of fellowship and social comfort in a hospital.
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1857Quotes
It is not a case we are treating; it is a living, palpitating, alas, too often suffering fellow creature.
—John Brown, 1904When 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 BCTo get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.
—Oscar Wilde, 1891The best physician is he who can distinguish the possible from the impossible.
—Herophilus, c. 290 BCThere must be quite a few things a hot bath won’t cure, but I don’t know many of them.
—Sylvia Plath, 1963All pain is one malady with many names.
—Antiphanes, c. 400 BCTo be sick is to enjoy monarchal prerogatives.
—Charles Lamb, 1833The 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, c. 600In 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, 1912Let me recommend the best medicine in the world: a long journey, at a mild season, through a pleasant country, in easy stages.
—James Madison, 1794Medication alone is not to be relied on. In one half the cases medicine is not needed, or is worse than useless. Obedience to spiritual and physical laws—hygiene of the body and hygiene of the spirit—is the surest warrant for health and happiness.
—Harriot K. Hunt, 1856