The doctor found, when she was dead, her last disorder mortal.
—Oliver Goldsmith (1730–74) Irish Novelist, Playwright, Poet
The doctor knows what his trained eyes see—and he says it’s the last of the ninth for me. So one more thing while the clouds loom dark and then I must leave this noisy park.
—Unknown
The only medicine that does women more good than harm is dress.
—Jean Paul (1763–1825) German Novelist, Humorist
I firmly believe that if the whole materia 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. (1809–94) American Physician, Essayist
There are three subjects on which the knowledge of the medical profession in general is woefully weak; they are manners, morals, and medicine.
—Gerald F. Lieberman
For what Harley Street specialist has time to understand the body, let alone the mind or both in combination, when he is a slave to thirteen thousand a year?
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English Novelist
What can’t be cured, must be endured.
—Common Proverb
The disease and its medicine are like two factions in a besieged town; they tear one another to pieces, but both unite against their common enemy, Nature.
—Francis Jeffrey, Lord Jeffrey (1773–1850) Scottish Judge, Literary Critic
Medicine is a science of uncertainty and an art of probability.
—William Osler (1849–1919) Canadian Physician
You can’t treat a car like a patient. A car needs love.
—Gerhard Kocher (b.1939) Swiss Publicist, Aphorist
Is it not also true that no physician, in so far as he is a physician, considers or enjoins what is for the physician’s interest, but that all seek the good of their patients? For we have agreed that a physician strictly so called, is a ruler of bodies, and not a maker of money, have we not?
—Plato (428 BCE–347 BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher, Mathematician, Educator
I am dying from the treatment of too many physicians.
—Lucan (Marcus Annaeus Lucanus) (39–65 CE) Roman Statesman, Latin Poet
Quackery has no friend like gullibility.
—Common Proverb
Prevention is better than cure.
—Desiderius Erasmus (c.1469–1536) Dutch Humanist, Scholar
Every doctor will allow a colleague to decimate a whole countryside sooner than violate the bond of professional etiquette by giving him away.
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish Playwright
Well, now there’s a remedy for everything except death.
—Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish Novelist
Desperate maladies require desperate remedies.
—French Proverb
He who lives by medical prescriptions lives miserably.
—Common Proverb
Doctor, no medicine.—We are machines made to live—organized expressly for that purpose.—Such is our nature.—Do not counteract the living principle.—Leave it at liberty to defend itself, and it will do better than your drugs.
—Napoleon I (1769–1821) Emperor of France
By medicine life may be prolonged, yet death will seize the doctor too.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
The superior doctor prevents sickness; The mediocre doctor attends to impending sickness; The inferior doctor treats actual sickness;
—Chinese Proverb
A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.
—The Holy Bible Scripture in the Christian Faith
Medicine, to produce health, has to examine disease; and music, to create harmony, must investigate discord.
—Plutarch (c.46–c.120 CE) Greek Biographer, Philosopher
Do not forget: in medicine, there are more important things than life and death: dollars and cents.
—Gerhard Kocher (b.1939) Swiss Publicist, Aphorist
Time is generally the best doctor.
—Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso) (c.43 BCE–c.18 CE) Roman Poet
Like a celestial chaperon, the placebo leads us through the uncharted passageways of mind and gives us a greater sense of infinity than if we were to spend all our days with our eyes hypnotically glued to the giant telescope at Mt. Palomar. What we see ultimately is that the placebo isn’t really necessary and that the mind can carry out its difficult and wondrous missions unprompted by little pills. The placebo is only a tangible object made essential in an age that feels uncomfortable with intangibles, an age that prefers to think that every inner effect must have an outer cause. Since it has size and shape and can be hand-held, the placebo satisfies the contemporary craving for visible mechanisms and visible answers . The placebo, then, is an emissary between the will to live and the body.
—Norman Cousins (1912–1990) American Political Journalist
He has been a doctor a year now and has had two patients, no, three, I think—yes, it was three; I attended their funerals.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
Laughter is the best medicine.
—Common Proverb
She saw she had fallen into the hands of one of those doctors who have strayed too far from apparent in the direction of the soul.
—Rebecca West (1892–1983) English Author, Journalist, Literary Critic
The bitterness of the potion, and the abhorrence of the patient are necessary circumstances to the operation. It must be something to trouble and disturb the stomach that must purge and cure it.
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–92) French Essayist
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