Oxford Dictionary of Medical Quotations

Varicose veins are the result of an improper
selection of grandparents.
The Principles and Practice of Medicinep. . Appleton,
New York ()

Humanity has but three great enemies; Fever,
famine and war; of these by far the greatest, by far
the most terrible, is fever.
Journal of the American Medical Association: ()

Can anything be more doleful than a procession of
four or five doctors into the sick man’s room?
Montreal Medical Journal: ()

In its more aggravated forms diffuse scleroderma
is one of the most terrible of all human ills...one
is literally a mummy, encased in an ever
shrinking, slowly contracting skin of steel.
Journal of Cutaneous Diseases: ()

The natural man has only two primal passions, to
get and beget.
Science and Immortality

The great majority gave no signs one way or the
other; like birth, their death was a sleep and a
forgetting.
Science and Immortality

Specialism, now a necessity, has fragmented the
specialties themselves in a way that makes the
outlook hazardous. The workers lose all sense of
proportion in a maze of minutiae.
Address, Classical Association, Oxford, May ()

Patients rarely die of the disease from which they
suffer. (Secondary or terminal infections are the
real cause of death.)
St. Bartholomew’s Hospital Reports: ()

We doctors have always been a simple trusting
folk. Did we not believe Galen implicitly for 1500
years and Hippocrates more than 2000?
Attributed

Sir Fielding Ould –

Master of the Lying Hospital, Dublin

Caesarean section is a detestable, barbarous,
illegal piece of inhumanity.
Quoted in The Age of Agonyp. , Guy Williams. Constable
and Co Ltd, London ()

Whether we should destroy the mother to save the
child is a deplorable dilemma which should
certainly be cleared up by the divines.
Quoted in The Age of Agonyp. , Guy William. Constable
and Co Ltd, London ()

Ovid BC–AD

Roman poet

So he whose belly swells with dropsy, the more he
drinks, the thirstier he grows.
FastiI.

Medicine sometimes snatches away health,
sometimes gives it.
Tristia

I am no better in mind than in body; both alike are

sick and I suffer double hurt.

TristiaIII.viii.

Tis not always in a physician’s power to cure the

sick; at times the disease is stronger than

trained art.

Pontic EpistlesI.iii.

Sleep, rest of things, O pleasing Deity,

Peace of the soul, which cares dost crucify,

Weary bodies refresh and mollify.

Attributed

Robert Owen –

Welsh social reformer

God and the Doctor we alike adore

But only when in danger, not before;

The danger o’er, both are alike requited,

God is forgotten, and the Doctor slighted.

EpigramCf. :

Frank Kittredge Paddock –

A general practitioner can no more become a

specialist than an old shoe can become a dancing

slipper.

Aphorisms

Sir James Paget –

English surgeon

As no two persons are exactly alike in health so

neither are any two in disease; and no diagnosis is

complete or exact which does not include an

estimate of the personal character, or the

constitution of the patient.

Stephen Paget –

English surgeon, writer and reformer

Talk of the patience of Job, said a Hospital nurse,

Job was never on night duty.

Confessio MediciCh. 

You cannot be a perfect doctor, till you have been

a patient.

Confessio MediciCh. 7

Walter Lincoln Palmer –

Don’t refer a patient to a psychiatrist as if you are

telling him to go to hell.

Aphorism

Lord Palmerston –

British Prime Minister

Die, my dear doctor! That’s the last thing I shall

do!

Attributed as his last words

Giovanni Papini –

Italian author and philosopher

Breathing is the greatest pleasure in life.

Attributed

    · 