A miracle drug is any drug that will do what the label says it will do.
—Eric Hodgins, 1964Quotes
I 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, 1803We have to ask ourselves whether medicine is to remain a humanitarian and respected profession or a new but depersonalized science in the service of prolonging life rather than diminishing human suffering.
—Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, 1969The doctor should be opaque to his patients and, like a mirror, should show them nothing but what is shown to him.
—Sigmund Freud, 1912In the name of Hippocrates doctors have invented the most exquisite form of torture ever known to man: survival.
—Luis Buñuel, 1983I am dying with the help of too many physicians.
—Alexander the Great, c. 323 BCHe is the best physician who is the most ingenious inspirer of hope.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1833There must be quite a few things a hot bath won’t cure, but I don’t know many of them.
—Sylvia Plath, 1963When 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 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, 1952The only places where American medicine can fully live up to its possibilities are the teaching hospitals.
—Bernard De Voto, 1951Well now, there’s a remedy for everything except death.
—Miguel de Cervantes, 1605