You can’t find the soul with a scalpel.
—Gustave Flaubert, c. 1880Quotes
I am dying with the help of too many physicians.
—Alexander the Great, c. 323 BCWhen 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 BCHealth 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, 1621Let me recommend the best medicine in the world: a long journey, at a mild season, through a pleasant country, in easy stages.
—James Madison, 1794There must be quite a few things a hot bath won’t cure, but I don’t know many of them.
—Sylvia Plath, 1963In the name of Hippocrates doctors have invented the most exquisite form of torture ever known to man: survival.
—Luis Buñuel, 1983Well now, there’s a remedy for everything except death.
—Miguel de Cervantes, 1605He is the best physician who is the most ingenious inspirer of hope.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1833A miracle drug is any drug that will do what the label says it will do.
—Eric Hodgins, 1964The 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, 1943I 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, 1803