Oxford Dictionary of Medical Quotations

The impression was neither of tragedy nor of
comedy...there were tears and laughter, happiness
and woe; it was tedious and interesting and
indifferent; it was as you saw it: it was tumultuous
and passionate; it was grave; it was sad and comic;
it was trivial; it was simple and complex; joy was
there and despair.... There was neither good nor
bad there. There were just facts. It was life.
A description of an outpatient clinic in Of Human Bondage
Ch. LXXXI

The mystic sees the ineffable, and the
psycho-pathologist the unspeakable.
The Moon and SixpenceCh. 

What makes old age hard to bear is not the failing
of one’s faculties, mental and physical but the
burden of one’s memories.
Points of ViewCh. 

I’ll give you my opinion of the human
race... Their heart’s in the right place, but their
head is a thoroughly inefficient organ.
The Summing Up

Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice
to you is to have nothing to do with it.
Attributed

Andre Maurois –

French writer

Growing old is a bad habit which a busy man has
no time to form.
The Aging American

Yet had Fleming not possessed immense
knowledge and an unremitting gift of observation
he might not have observed the effect of the
hyssop mould.
Life of Alexander Fleming

I knew a man who had been virtually drowned
and then revived. He said that his death had not
been painful.
Attributed

Gavin Maxwell –

British writer and naturalist

Then it came again, thunderous, earthshaking,
the longest, loudest and most superbly
stupendous fart that I have ever heard in
my life, a sound of such magnificent and
prolonged volume as to appear utterly beyond
human capability.
Raven Seek Thy Brotherp.. Longmans, Harlow ()

Tom G. Mayer –

US Professor of Othopaedic Surgery, Dallas, Texas

Voluntary, or skeletal, muscle is by far the muscle
type of greatest volume in humans. The
musculature involved in spinal movement and
control is in turn the largest complex of skeletal
muscles in the body.
The SpineCh. , p. , Rothman and Simone.
W. B. Saunders Co. ()

Charles H. Mayo –

US physician

While medicine is a science, in many particulars it

cannot be exact, so baffling are the varying results

of varying conditions of human life.

Collected Papers of the Mayo Clinic and Mayo Foundation

: ()

The prevention of disease today is one of the

most important factors in the line of human

endeavour.

Collected Papers of the Mayo Clinic and Mayo Foundation: 

()

The sooner patients can be removed from the

depressing influence of general hospital life the

more rapid their convalescence.

Lancet: ()

Good health is an essential to happiness,

and happiness is an essential to good

citizenship.

Journal of the American Dental Association: ()

The trained nurse has given nursing the human,

or shall we say, the divine touch, and made the

hospital desirable for patients with serious

ailments regardless of their home advantages.

Lancet: ()

While there are several chronic diseases more

destructive to life than cancer, none is more

feared.

Annals of Surgery: ()

There are two objects of medical education: To

heal the sick, and to advance the science.

Collected Papers of the Mayo Clinic and Mayo Foundation

: ()

The scientist is not content to stop at the

obvious.

Collected Papers of the Mayo Clinic and Mayo Foundation

: ()

I have never known a man who died from

overwork, but many who died from doubt.

Bartlett’s Unfamiliar Quotations

The safest thing for a patient is to be in the hands

of a man engaged in teaching medicine. In order

to be a teacher of medicine the doctor must

always be a student.

Proceedings of the Staff Meetings of the Mayo Clinic: 

()

Medicine is a profession for social service and

it developed organisation in response to social

need.

Collected Papers of the Mayo Clinic and Mayo Foundation

: ()

The object of health education is to change the

conduct of individual men, women and children

by teaching them to care for their bodies well, and

this instruction should be given throughout the

entire period of their educational life.

Minnesota Medicine: ()

 .   · . 