Oxford Dictionary of Medical Quotations

Anonymous continued

Have faith in the Lord but use sulphur for the itch.

Here lies one who for medicines would not give
A little gold, and so his life he lost;
I fancy now he’d wish again to live,
Could he but guess how much his funeral cost.

Homeopathy waged a war of radicalism against
the profession. Very different would have been the
profession’s attitude toward homeopathy if it had
aimed, like other doctrines advanced by
physicians, to gain a foothold among medical men
alone or chiefly, instead of making its appeal to the
popular favour and against the profession.
Report to the Connecticut Medical Society(), quoted by
Coulter in Divided Legacy

If I were summing up the qualities of a good
teacher of medicine, I would enumerate human
sympathy, moral and intellectual integrity,
enthusiasm, and ability to talk, in addition, of
course, to knowledge of his subject.

If three simple questions and one well chosen
laboratory test lead to an unambiguous diagnosis,
why harry the patient with more?
Editorial, Clinical decision by numbers. Lancet: ()

If you resolve to give up smoking, drinking and
loving, you don’t actually live longer; it just seems
that way.

In diagnosis, the young are positive and the
middle-aged tentative; only the old have flair.
Lancet: ()

In the nineteenth century men lost their fear of
God and acquired a fear of microbes.

It is better to employ a doubtful remedy than to
condemn the patient to a certain death.

It is not what disease the patient has but which
patient has the disease.

Late children, early orphans.

Let out the blood, let out the disease.
Popular aphorism for hundreds of years until the end of
the nineteenth century

Man has an inalienable right to die of something.
Quack cures for cancer, Cardiff MailOctober ()

Many physicians would prefer passing a small
kidney stone to presenting a paper.
Journal of the American Medical Association:()

Marriage—a stage between infancy and adultery.
Commentary on adolescence

Medical statistics are like a bikini. What they
reveal is interesting but what they conceal is vital.

Medicine, like every useful science, should be
thrown open to the observation and study of all.
New York Evening StarDecember (), reflecting the
Thomsonian populist philosophy of the time

Mind over matter.

My friend was sick: I attended him. He died; I
dissected him.

My God all that reality!

Thespian to doctor on discovering his trade.

Never let the sun set or rise on a small bowel

obstruction.

P. Mucha Jr, Small intestinal obstruction. Surgical Clinics of

North America: –()

Not so much attention is paid to our children’s

minds as is paid to their feet.

Quoted by A.V. Neale in The Advancement of Child Health

No woman wants an abortion. Either she wants a

child or she wishes to avoid pregnancy.

Letter to the Lancet

Palliative care should not be associated exclusively

with terminal care. Many patients need it early in

the course of their disease.

Report of the Expert Advisory Group on Cancer to the Chief

Medical Officers of England and Wales, Calman-Hine ()

Parenthood is the only profession that has been

left exclusively to amateurs.

Patients and their families will forgive you for

wrong diagnoses, but will rarely forgive you for

wrong prognoses; the older you grow in medicine,

the more chary you get about offering iron clad

prognoses, good or bad.

David Seegal Journal of Chronic Diseases:()

Physicians and politicians resemble one another

in this respect, that some defend the constitution

and others destroy it.

Acton or the Circle of Life

Physicians are rather like undescended testicles,

they are difficult to locate and when they are

found, they are pretty ineffective.

Book of Humorous Medical Anecdotesp. . Springwood

Books, Ascot, Berkshire, UK ()

Poverty is a virtue greatly exaggerated by

physicians no longer forced to practise it.

Removing the teeth will cure something,

including the foolish belief that removing the

teeth will cure everything.

Rheumatic fever licks at the joints, but bites at the

heart.

Science without conscience is the death of the soul.

Sepsis is an insult to a surgeon.

Surgeons get long lives and short memories.

Comment at The Association of Coloproctology Meeting,

Harrogate, June ()

The best patient is a millionaire with a positive

Wassermann.

Commentary before the era of antibiotics

The best physicians are Dr. Diet, Dr. Quiet and

Dr. Merryman.

The British Medical Association is a club of London

physicians and surgeons who once a year visit and

patronize their professional friends in the country.

Medical Times and Gazettep. , January ()

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