Oxford Dictionary of Medical Quotations

Sydney Smith –

British churchman and essayist and wit

I am convinced digestion is the great secret of life.
Letters to Arthur Kinglake

There is only one rule of professional conduct. Do
what you think right and take position and
emoluments as an accident; all else is labour and
sorrow.
A Memoir of the Revd Sydney Smith(quoted by Lady
Holland)

Death must be distinguished from dying, with
which it is often confounded.
A Memoir of the Revd Sydney SmithCh. (quoted by Lady
Holland)

Oh! when I have the gout, I feel as if I was walking
on my eyeballs.
A Memoir of the Revd Sydney SmithCh. (quoted by Lady
Holland)

That sign of old age, extolling the past at the
expense of the present.
A Memoir of the Revd Sydney SmithCh. (quoted by Lady
Holland)

If consumption is too powerful for physicians, at
least they should not suffer themselves to be
outwitted by such little upstart disorders as the
hay-fever.
Letter to Dr Holland, June ()

One evil in old age is, that as your time is come,
you think every little illness is the beginning of the
end. When a man expects to be arrested, every
knock at the door is an alarm.
Letter to Sir Wilmot-Horton, February ()

People of wealth and rank never use ugly names
for ugly things. Apoplexy is an affection of the
head; paralysis is nervousness; gangrene is pain
and inconvenience in the extremities.
Letter to Mrs Holland, January ()

What is childhood but a series of happy delusions?
A Memoir of the Revd Sydney SmithCh. (quoted by Lady
Holland)

Theobald Smith –

US Professor of Pathology, Harvard

Great discoveries which give a new direction to
currents of thought and research are not, as a
rule, gained by the accumulation of vast
quantities offigures and statistics.
Boston Medical and Surgical Journal: ()

Tobias Smollett –

English novelist and surgeon

A young man, in whose air and countenance
appeared all the uncouth gravity and supercilious
self-conceit of a physician hot from his studies.
The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle

Facts are stubborn things.
Gil Glasx.i

A Frenchman will sooner part with his religion

than with his hair, which indeed, no consideration

will induce him to forego.

Travels through France and Italy, ‘Letter from Paris, October ,

’

Francis Scott Smyth –?

US paediatrician

To know what kind of a person has a disease is as

essential as to know what kind of disease a person

has.

Journal of Medical Education: ()

John Snow –

British physician, anaesthetist, and epidemiologist

The communicability of cholera ought not be

disguised from the people, under the idea that the

knowledge of it would cause panic or occasion the

sick to be deserted.

On the Mode of Communication of Cholera

Socrates – BC

Greek philosopher

Living well and beautifully and justly are all one

thing.

Crito(quoted by Plato)

Base men live to eat and drink, and good men eat

and drink to live.

Quoted by Plutarch Moralia, ‘How the Young Man should

Study Poetry’ (transl. F. C. Babbit)

Susan Sontag –

US novelist and essayist

Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship in the

kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick.

Illness as Metaphor

Sophocles C.–BC

Greek dramatist

Death is not the greatest of ills, it is worse to want

to die, and not be able to.

Electra

Sleep is the only medicine that gives ease.

Philoctetes(transl. F. Storr)

Merrill C. Sosman –

US physician

One look is worth a thousand listens.

Aphorism referring to X-rays

Samuel Southard

Contemporary US commentator

Illness may precipitate a spiritual crisis. Since

illness is man’s reaction to disease, it is a time

when men are brought face to face with the

ultimate concerns of life.

In Spiritual Care: The Nurse’s RoleCh. , p. , Sharon Fish

and Judith Allen Shelly. Intervarsity Press, Illinois, USA

()

  ·   