The 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, 1952Quotes
Let me recommend the best medicine in the world: a long journey, at a mild season, through a pleasant country, in easy stages.
—James Madison, 1794Physician, 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. 1884We 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, 1969No families take so little medicine as those of doctors, except those of apothecaries.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1860Medication 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, 1856The best physician is he who can distinguish the possible from the impossible.
—Herophilus, c. 290 BCHe is the best physician who is the most ingenious inspirer of hope.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1833It is not a case we are treating; it is a living, palpitating, alas, too often suffering fellow creature.
—John Brown, 1904How many desolate creatures on the earth have learnt the simple dues of fellowship and social comfort in a hospital.
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1857Health 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, 1621I am dying with the help of too many physicians.
—Alexander the Great, c. 323 BCThere must be quite a few things a hot bath won’t cure, but I don’t know many of them.
—Sylvia Plath, 1963