Medicine

Historical quotes

• Tum medicinali tantum florebat in arte, posset ut hic nullus languor hobere locum
  • Translation: Medicine was so advanced in Salerno that there was no place for illness.http://www.comune.salerno.it/la_salerno_turistica/default_en.asp?page=/la_salerno_turistica/la_storia/scuola_medica_en.asp
  • Alfano I, Archbishop of Salerno (1058-1085)

• "If you know neither the terminology nor the concepts, you're ignorant. If you know the terminology, but you don't know the concepts, you're dangerous."
  • Jacob M. Appel, Arborophilia (2005)

• "The unbiased opinion of most medical men of sound judgment and long experience...[holds that] the amount of death and disaster in the world would be less, if all disease were left to itself."
  • Harvard professor Jacob Bigelow, 1835.

• "Cured yesterday of my disease, I died last night of my physician."
  • Matthew Prior (1664-1721)

• "Our diseases are so old fashioned, they can't keep up with the new medicines."
  • Leonid S. Sukhorukov All About Everything

• "I firmly believe that if the whole material medica, as now used, could be sunk to the bottom of the sea, it would be better for mankind-and all the worse for the fishes."
  • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., 19th century physician

• "The college-birs are three
  Law, Physic and Divinity
  And while these three remain combined,
  They keep the world oppressed and blind...
  Now is the time to be set free,
  From priests' and Doctors' slavery.
  • 19th century rhyme associated with the Thomsonian movement

• "The ignorance and general incompetency of the average graduate of the American medical Schools, at the time when he receives the degree which turns him loose upon the community, is something horrible to contemplate."
  • Charles Eliot, President of Harvard University, 1869
    • In response to this call for reform, Harvard Professor of Surgery Harold Bigelow replied "He actually proposes to have written examinations for the degree of doctor of medicine. I had to tell him that he knew nothing about the quality of Harvard medical students. More than half of them can barely write. Of course they can't pass written examinations...No medical school has thought it proper to risk large existing classes and larger receipts by introducing more rigorous standards."

• "We should not encourage the medical student to while away his time in the labyrinths of Chemistry and Physiology."
  • Harvard Medical School professor, 1871.

• "History is replete with examples of what happens when any group of authorities do not have to answer to empirical evidence but are free to define truth as they see fit. None of the examples has a happy ending. Why should it be otherwise with therapy?"
  • Robert Todd Carroll, The Skeptic's Dictionary, entry on "repressed memory therapy (RMT)"

• "The objective of medicine is not the knowledge of the Disease, but the relieve of the suffering due to it"
  • Miguel Ángel García, spanish medical doctor

• "From inability to let well alone; from too much zeal for the new and contempt for what is old; from putting knowledge before wisdom, science before art and cleverness before common sense; from treating patients as cases; and from making the cure of the disease more grievous than the endurance of the same, Good Lord, deliver us."
  • Sir Robert Hutchison, 20th century physician, British Medical Journal, 1953; 1: 671.

• The closest most doctors will ever get to empathy is cuddling a hot water bottle; the closest thing to their hearts are usually their wallets.
  • Swami Raj

• Medicine, the only profession that labours incessantly to destroy the reason for its existence.
  • James Bryce

• "The only real difference between medicine and poison is the dose....and intent"
  • Oscar G. Hernandez, MD

• "Doctors are men who prescribe medicines of which they know little, to cure diseases of which they know less, in human beings of whom they know nothing."
  • Voltaire (1694-1778)

• Wherever the art of medicine is loved, there also is love of humanity.
  • Hippocrates

Quotes in fiction

• "The smart man knows bandages only hides his wound."
  • Bobblehead inscription in Fallout 3