Oxford Dictionary of Medical Quotations

Swahili proverb

The sick man is the garden of the physicians.

Swedish proverb

With a young lawyer you lose your inheritance;
with a young doctor your health.

Jonathan Swift –

Anglo-Irish priest and writer

No wise man ever wished to be younger.
Thoughts on Various Subjects, Moral and Diverting

Physicians ought not to give their judgment of
religion, for the same reason that butchers are not
admitted to be jurors upon life and death.
Thoughts on Various Subjects, Moral and Diverting

Thomas Sydenham –

British physician

This is all very fine, but it won’t do—Anatomy—
Botany—Nonsense! Sir, I know an old woman in
Covent Garden who understands botany better,
and as for anatomy, my butcher can dissect a joint
full and well; no, young man, all that is stuff; you
must go to the bedside, it is there alone you can
learn disease.
Quoted by John Comrie in Life of Thomas Sydenham

The art of medicine was to be properly learned
only from its practice and its exercise.
Medical ObservationsDedicatory Epistle

I watched what method Nature might take, with
intention of subduing the symptom by treading in
her footsteps.
Medical Observations, Ch. 

Nothing in medicine is so insignificant as to merit
inattention.
Medical Observations, Ch. 

What matters is that a doctor should come to
know diseases, should learn the conditions out of
which they arise and should be aware of the
means by which they can be cured.
Quoted in The Great Doctors—A Biographical History of
Medicinep. , Henry E. Sigerist. Dover Publications, New
York () (original W. W. Norton and Co. Ltd, )

A disease, however much its course may be
adverse to the human body, is nothing more than
an effort of Nature, who strives with might and
main to restore the health of the patient by the
elimination of morbific humour.
Attributed

Simply to enumerate all the symptoms of
hysteria would take a long day, so many are they.
Attributed

Gout, unlike any other disease, kills more rich
men than poor, more wise than simple.
Wo r k s‘A Treatise on Gout and Dropsy’ (transl.
R. G. Latham) ()

I confidently affirm that the greater part of those

who are supposed to have died of gout, have died

of the medicine rather than the disease—a

statement in which I am supported by

observation.

Wo r k s‘A Treatise on Gout and Dropsy’ (transl.

R. G. Latham) ()

A man is as old as his arteries.

Attributed

Sylvius (François De La Bois) th

century

French Professor of Anatomy, Paris

The aim of treatment must be to maintain the

energies of the organism to drive away the illness,

to remove the causes and to mitigate the

symptoms.

Praxeos medicae idia nova()

Andrew James Symington –?

The medical profession is a noble and pleasant

one, though laborious and often full of anxiety.

Attributed

Publilius Syrus st century

Roman dramatist

The madman thinks the rest of the world crazy.

Moral Sayings

They live ill who expect to live always.

Moral Sayings

Whom Fortune wishes to destroy she first makes

mad.

Moral Sayings

Pain of mind is worse than pain of body.

Sententiae

Thomas Szasz –

Hungarian-born US psychiatrist and writer

Masturbation: the primary sexual activity of

mankind. In the nineteenth century it was a

disease; in the twentieth it’s a cure.

The Second Sin

If you talk to God, you are praying; if God talks to

you, you have schizophrenia.

The Second Sin

Psychiatrists classify a person as neurotic if he

suffers from his problems in living, and a

psychotic if he makes others suffer.

The Second Sin

There is no psychology; there is only biography

and autobiography.

The Second Sin

Tacitus c. –

Roman historian

The physician is superfluous amongst the healthy.

Dialogus de Oratoribus

 · 