Harry Keen
Professor of Human Metabolism, Guy’s Hospital, London
Medicine has been caught up like all other human
activities in the technological revolution of the
last hundred years. It has become a restless,
critical discipline, trying desperately to encompass
an explosive increase in knowledge in the
biological sciences.
Preface to Triumphs in Medicine. Paul Elek, London and
New Hampshire, USA ()
John F. Kennedy –
US president
A medical revolution has extended the life of our
elder citizens without providing the dignity and
security those later years deserve.
Acceptance speech, Democratic National Convention, Los
Angeles, July ()
No costs have increased more rapidly in the last
decade than the cost of medical care.
Address on the th Anniversary of the Social Security
Act, August ()
The basic resource of a nation is its people. Its
strength can be no greater than the health and
vitality of its population. Preventable sickness,
disability and physical or mental incapacity
are matters of both individual and national
concern.
Message to Congress on a Health Program, February
()
We cannot afford to postpone any longer a
reversal in our approach to mental affliction. For
too long the shabby treatment of the many
millions of the mentally disabled in custodial
institutions and many millions more now in
communities needing help has been justified on
grounds of inadequate funds, further studies and
future promises.
Message to Congress on Mental Health, February
()
The needs of children should not be made to
wait.
Message to Congress on the Nation’s Youth, February
()
A proud and resourceful nation can no longer ask
its older people to live in constant fear of a serious
illness for which adequate funds are not available.
We owe them the right of dignity in sickness as
well as in health.
Message to Congress on Problems of the Aged, February
()
Jean Kerr –
US dramatist
The average, healthy, well-adjusted adult gets up
at seven-thirty in the morning feeling just plain
terrible.
Please Don’t Eat the Daisies
Ellen Key –
Swedish writer
At every step the child should be allowed to meet
the real experiences of life; the thorns should
never be plucked from his roses.
The Century of the ChildCh. Rev Martin Luther King –
US black civil rights leader
We h ave ge nuflected before the god of science only
to find that it has given us the atomic bomb,
producing fears and anxieties that science can
never mitigate.
Strength Through LoveCh. Rudyard Kipling –
Indian-born British writer and poet
There are only two classes of mankind in the
world—doctors and patients.
A Doctor’s Work, address to medical students at London’s
Middlesex Hospital, October ()
The world has long ago decided that you (doctors)
have no working hours that anybody is bound to
respect.
A Doctor’s Work, address to medical students at London’s
Middlesex Hospital, October ()
Those people who would limit, and cripple, and
hamper research because they fear research may
be accompanied by a little pain and suffering.
A Doctor’s Work, address to medical students at London’s
Middlesex Hospital, October ()
We are very slightly changed
From the semi-apes who ranged
India’s prehistoric clay.
General Summary
A woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a
smoke.
The BetrothedJohn H. Knowles –
President, Rockefeller Foundation
The American Medical Association operating from
a platform of negative vigilance presents no
solutions but busily fights each change and then
loudly supports it against the next proposal.
Speech to the Institute on Medical Center Problems,
December ()Theodor Kocher –
Swiss surgeon
A surgeon is a doctor who can operate and who
knows when not to.
Attributed to Kocher, perhaps reflecting his dismay at the
effects of total strumectomy (thyroidectomy) on goitre
patientsSergei S. Korsakoff –
Russian neuropsychiatrist
The less restraint for the patient, the more
restraint for the doctor.
Dictionary of Medical Eponyms, (nd edn.), p. , Firkin
and Whitworth. The Parthenon () · .