Oxford Dictionary of Medical Quotations

Huai-nan Tze (Liu An) diedBC

Doctors cannot cure their own complaints.
Attributed

Huang Ti c.BC

Yellow Emperor

I have heard that in ancient times the people lived
to be over a hundred years old, and yet they
remained active and did not become decrepit in
their activities.
Dialogues between the Yellow Emperor (China) and his Prime
Minister

All the blood is under control of the heart.
The blood current flows continuously in a circle
and never stops.
Nei Ching Su Wên

The kidneys are like the officials who do energetic
work, and they excel through their ability and
cleverness.
Nei Ching Su WênBk , Sect. 

The heart is the root of life and causes the
versatility of the spiritual faculties.

The heart influences the face and fills the pulse
with blood.
Nei Ching Su WênBk , Sect. 

The treatment with poison medicines comes from
the West.
Nei Ching Su WênBK , Sect. 

Poor medical workmanship is neglectful and
careless and must therefore be combatted, because
a disease that is not completely cured can easily
breed new disease or there can be a relapse of the
old disease.
Nei Ching Su WênBk , Sect. 

The most important requirement of the art of
healing is that no mistakes or neglect occurs.
Nei Ching Su WênBk , Sect. 

Elbert G. Hubbard –

US author and editor

Little minds are interested in the extraordinary;
great minds in the commonplace.
Roycroft Dictionary and Book of Epigrams

Insomnia never comes to a man who has to get up
exactly at six o’clock.
Insomnia troubles only those who can sleep any
time.
The Philistine, ‘In Re Muldoon’

A merry heart doeth good like a medicine: but a
broken spirit drieth the bones.
Proverbs: 

Frank (Kin) Hubbard –

US humorist and journalist

Some people are so sensitive they feel snubbed if
an epidemic overlooks them.
Abe Martin’s Broadcast

Henry Huchard –

Parisian physician

Gout is to the arteries what rheumatism is to

the heart.

Lancet:() (quoted by D. Evan Bedford)

Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland

–

German professor of medicine

Someone may be perfectly rational, yet commit

manslaughter, adultery, theft: he will easily find a

physician who testifies that the action must be

credited to temporary insanity.

Neue Auswahl kleiner medizinischen SchriftenI ()

The physician must generalise the disease, and

individualise the patient.

Quoted by Oliver Wendell Holmes in Medical Essays‘Border

Lines in Medical Science’

Patricia Hughes

Contemporary British psychiatrist and educationalist

While we need to maintain diversity of skills and

personality, there are some characteristics which

we demand in any doctor. Enough intellectual

ability to do the job, plus honesty, integrity and

conscientiousness, must be at the heart of good

practice.

Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine: –()

Victor Hugo –

French writer

If we must suffer, let us suffer nobly.

Contemplations‘Les Malheureux’

Indigestion is charged by God with enforcing

morality on the stomach.

Les Misérables‘Fantine’, Bk III, Ch. 

The misery of a child is interesting to a mother,

the misery of a young man is interesting to a

young woman, the misery of an old man is

interesting to nobody.

Les Misérables‘Saint Denis’

David Hume –

Scottish philosopher and political economist

It appears to me that apothecaries bear the same

relation to physicians, that priests do to

philosophers; the ignorance of the former makes

them positive, and dogmatical, and assuming, and

enterprising, and pretending, and consequently

much more taking with the people.

Letter to John Clephane, February ()

What we call a mind is nothing but a heap or

collection of different perceptions, united together

by certain relations, and suppos’d, tho’ falsely, to

be endow’d with a perfect simplicity and identity.

A Treatise of Human NatureBk I, Pt IV, Sect. 

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