Oxford Dictionary of Medical Quotations

Thomas Jefferson –

US president and philosopher

The office of surgeon has been considered as on a
footing with that of chaplain, and the
administering of medicine to be as inoffensive as
giving religious instruction to those with whom
we are contending.
Letter to Philip Turpin, July ()

If the body be feeble, the mind will not be
strong.
Letter to Thomas M. Randolph Jr, August ()

Not less than two hours a day should be devoted
to bodily exercise.
Letter to Thomas M. Randolph Jr, August ()

The art of life is the art of avoiding pain.
Letter to Maria Cosway, October ()

Idleness begets ennui, ennui the hypochondriac,
and that a diseased body. No laborious person was
ever yet hysterical.
Letter to Martha Jefferson, March ()

The most uninformed mind with a healthy body,
is happier than the wisest valetudinarian.
Letter to Thomas M. Randolph Jr, July ()

Health is the first requisite after morality.
Letter to Peter Carr, August ()

Yours is the comfortable reflection that mankind
can never forget that you have lived. Future
nations will know by history only that the
loathsome smallpox has existed and by you has
been extirpated.
Letter to Dr Edward Jenner, May ()

The only sure foundations of medicine are an
intimate knowledge of the human body and
observation on the effects of medicinal
substances on that.
Letter to Dr Caspar Wistar, June ()

The natural course of the human mind is
certainly from credulity to scepticism.
Letter to Dr Caspar Wistar, June ()

The adventurous physician goes on, and
substitutes presumption for knowledge.
Letter to Dr Caspar Wistar, June ()

I wish to see this beverage (beer) become common
instead of the whiskey which kills one-third of our
citizens and ruins their families.
Letter to Col. Charles Yancey, January ()

Bodily decay is gloomy in prospect, but of all
human contemplations the most abhorrent is
body without mind.
Letter to John Adams, August ()

We never repent of having eaten too little.
Letter to Thomas Jefferson Smith, February ()

Edward Jenner –

English country physician

The deviation of man from the state in which he
was originally placed by nature seems to have
proved to him a prolific source of disease.
An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae,
or Cow-Pox

To have admitted the truth of a doctrine at once

so novel and so unlike anything that ever had

appeared in the annals of medicine, without the

test of the most rigid scrutiny, would have

bordered upon temerity.

An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae,

or Cow-Pox

Sir William Jenner –

English physician and pathologist

Never believe what a patient tells you his doctor

has said.

Attributed

Jerome K. Jerome –

British humorist

We drink one another’s health and spoil our own.

Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, ‘On Eating and Drinking’

Love is like the measles, we all have to go

through it.

Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, ‘On Being in Love’

I never read a patent medicine advertisement

without being impelled to the conclusion that

I am suffering from the particular disease

therein dealt with in its most virulent form.

Three Men in a BoatCh. 

William Stanley Jevons –

English economist and logician

So-called original research is now regarded as a

profession, adopted by hundreds of men, and

communicated by a system of training.

The Principles of ScienceCh. XXVI ()

Jewish proverb

God could not be everywhere and therefore he

made mothers.

John of Arderne –

English surgeon and father of colorectal surgery

A bubo is a tumour developing within the

anus in the rectum – of great hardness but little

aching.

Treatises of Fistula-in-anoD’Arcy Power. Oxford University

Press ()

I have never seen, nor have I ever heard of anyone

who could be cured of the bubo.

Treatises of Fistula-in-anoD’Arcy Power. Oxford University

Press, Oxford ()

Sir Elton John –

British rock singer

There’s nothing wrong with going to bed with

somebody of your own sex. People should be very

free with sex – they should draw the line at goats.

Attributed

Samuel Johnson –

English lexicographer and writer

We palliate what we cannot cure.

Dictionary of the English Language()

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