The 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. 600Quotes
Well 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. 1884To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.
—Oscar Wilde, 1891The doctor should be opaque to his patients and, like a mirror, should show them nothing but what is shown to him.
—Sigmund Freud, 1912No families take so little medicine as those of doctors, except those of apothecaries.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1860Health 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, 1621A miracle drug is any drug that will do what the label says it will do.
—Eric Hodgins, 1964I am dying with the help of too many physicians.
—Alexander the Great, c. 323 BCAll pain is one malady with many names.
—Antiphanes, c. 400 BCThere must be quite a few things a hot bath won’t cure, but I don’t know many of them.
—Sylvia Plath, 1963The 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, 1605Doctors don’t know everything really. They understand matter, not spirit. And you and I live in spirit.
—William Saroyan, 1943