The comforting, if spurious, precision of
laboratory results has the same appeal as the
lifebelt to the weak swimmer.
Lancet: –()
The fact is that in creating towns, men create the
materials for an immense hotbed of disease, and
this effect can only be neutralised by
extraordinary artificial precautions.
The TimesOctober ()
The inhabitants of Harley Street and Wimpole
Street have been so taken up with their private
practices that they have neglected to add to
knowledge. The pursuit of learning has been
handicapped by the pursuit of gain.
Royal Commission on University Education()
The National Health Service is rotting before our
eyes, with a lack of political will to make the
tough choices for a first-class service for an ever
more demanding population.
Leader, The TimesJuly ()
The new definition of psychiatry is the care of the
id by the odd.
The principal objection to old age is that there is
no future in it.
The psychiatrist is the obstetrician of the mind.
The publication of a long list of authors’ names
after the title is a little like having all a vessel’s
ballast hanging from the masthead, as if to
counterbalance the barnacles.
New England Journal of Medicine:()
The reason that academic disputes are so bitter is
that the stakes are so small.
There are two kinds of sleep. The sleep of the just
and the sleep of the just after.
There is no bed shortage – most people have their
own.
Capital DoctorIssue , December ()
There is no short cut from chemical laboratory to
clinic, except one that passes too close to the morgue.
American Medical Association () as quoted in Cured to
Death, Arabella Melville and Colin Johnson. Secker and
Warburg Ltd, London ()
The sick are still in General Mixed Workhouses—the
maternity cases, the cancerous, the venereal, the
chronically infirm, and even the infectious, all
together in one building, often in the same ward
where they cannot be treated.
The Failure of the Poor Law, UK National Committee to
Promote the Break-up of the Poor Laws ()
The spine is a series of bones running down your
back. You sit on one end of it and your head sits
on the other.
The wound is granulating well, the matter formed
is diminishing in quantity and is laudable. But the
wound is still deep and must be dressed from the
bottom to ensure sound healing.
British Medical Journal() of the postoperative recovery
after appendicectomy of Edward VII
They shall lay their hands on the sick, and they
shall recover.
Book of Common prayer(), describing Queen Anne’s
‘healings’
Thou to whom the sick and dying
Ever came, nor came in vain,
With thy healing hands replying
To their wearied cry of pain.
The New English Hymnalp. . Canterbury Press, Norwich
()
’Tis better than riches
To scratch when it itches
Today’s facts are tomorrow’s fallacies.
We forever have to walk the tightrope between
what is seen to be the need and what is thought to
be the demand...that’s all part of setting
priorities and having a rational debate.
A NHS Chief Executive Officer in Primary Care and Public
Involvement, Timothy Milewa and Michael Calnan
Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine: –()
You shall not eat or drink in the company of other
people but with lepers alone, and you shall know
that when you shall have died you will not be
buried in the church.
Advice to lepers in the Middle Ages in Treves. Quoted in
O. Schell, Zur Geschichte des Aussatzes am Niederrhein, Ardir
für Geschichte der Medeziniii:–()
You Surgeons of London, who puzzle your Pates,
To ride in your Coaches, and purchase Estates,
Give over, for Shame, for your Pride has a Fall,
And ye Doctress of Epsom has outdone you all.
Gentleman’s MagazineOctober (), sardonically
commenting on the rise of quackery in the eighteenth
century with this line from ‘The Husband’s Relief’, quoted
in Sidelights of Medical Historyby Zachary Cope, The Royal
Society of Medicine ()Antiphanes –?bc
Greek philosopher and playwright, Athens
All pain is one malady with many names.
The DoctorJohn Apley –
Consultant paediatrician, Bristol, UK
The further away the chronic abdominal pain in a
child is from the umbilicus the more likely an
organic cause.
AttributedApocrypha
Perfect health is above gold; a sound body before
riches.
EcclesiasticusArabic proverbs
He who has health has hope; and he who has
hope has everything.
No man is a good physician who has never
been sick.
Love and pregnancy and riding on a camel cannot
be hid. ·
Continued