Physicians famous quotes
Last updated: Sep 5, 2024
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We know the average American physician interrupts their patient in 14 seconds.
-- Abraham Verghese -
The bottom line: health care reform is about the patient, not about the physician.
-- Abraham Verghese -
My sense is that the wonderful technology that we have to visualize the inside of the body often leaves physicians feeling that the exam is a waste of time and so they may shortchange the ritual.
-- Abraham Verghese -
If the patient has been to more than four physicians, nutrition is probably the medical answer.
-- Abram Hoffer -
It takes approximately forty years for innovative thought to be incorporated into mainstream thought. I expect and hope that orthomolecular medicine, within the next five to ten years, will cease to be a specialty in medicine and that all physicians will be using nurition as an essential tool in treating disease.
-- Abram Hoffer -
The longer I practise medicine, the more convinced I am there are only two types of cases: those that involve taking the trousers off and those that don't.
-- Alan Bennett -
Remember. You are a physician. You are not a policeman nor are you a minister of religion. You must take people as they come. Remember, too that though you will generally know more about the condition than the patient, it is the patient who has the condition and this if nothing else bestows on him or her a kind of wisdom. You have the knowledge but that does not entitle you to be superior. Knowledge makes you the servant not the master.
-- Alan Bennett -
Within every patient there resides a doctor, and we as physicians are at our best when we we put our patients in touch with the doctor inside themselves.
-- Albert Schweitzer -
Prescription: A physician's guess at what will best prolong the situation with least harm to the patient.
-- Ambrose Bierce -
BODY-SNATCHER, n. A robber of grave-worms. One who supplies the young physicians with that with which the old physicians have supplied the undertaker.
-- Ambrose Bierce -
APOTHECARY, n. The physician's accomplice, undertaker's benefactor and grave worm's provider
-- Ambrose Bierce -
Keep away from physicians. It is all probing and guessing and pretending with them. They leave it to Nature to cure in her own time, but they take the credit. As well as very fat fees.
-- Anthony Burgess -
When he can render no further aid, the physician alone can mourn as a man with his incurable patient. This is the physician's sad lot.
-- Aretaeus of Cappadocia -
It is no part of a physician's business to use either persuasion or compulsion upon the patients.
-- Aristotle -
We have not only multiplied diseases, but we have made them more fatal.
-- Benjamin Rush -
In the wake of the Supreme Court of Canada decision (Chaoulli-Zeliotis), the Canadian Medicare system is about to be redesigned. Physicians must not just sit at the table, but must position themselves at the head, where they can lead and direct the nature of that design.
-- Brian Day -
When it comes to physicians there is a common thread that is a major barrier to solving our concerns. We are divided. The result is a divide and conquer scenario, in which we negotiate as adversaries, first with government and then with one another about our relative worth, while the "conqueror" observes and continues to rule.
-- Brian Day -
As a physician, I am embarrassed by my profession's lack of interest in healthier lifestyles. We need to change the way we approach chronic disease.
-- Caldwell Esselstyn -
...as our friend Zach has often noted, in our days those who do the best for astronomy are not the salaried university professors, but so-called dillettanti, physicians, jurists, and so forth.Lamenting the fragmentary time left to a professor has remaining after fulfilling his teaching duties.
-- Carl Friedrich Gauss -
A physician who fails to enter the body of a patient with the lamp of knowledge and understanding can never treat diseases. He should first study all the factors, including environment, which influence a patient's disease, and then prescribe treatment. It is more important to prevent the occurrence of disease than to seek a cure
-- Charaka -
Herbs are the friend of the physician and the pride of cooks.
-- Charlemagne -
Our role is to develop techniques that allow us to provide emergency life-saving procedures to injured patients in an extreme, remote environment without the presence of a physician.
-- Chris Hadfield -
My opinion is, that more harm than good is done by physicians; and I am convinced, that, had I left my patients to nature, instead of prescribing drugs, more would have been saved.
-- Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland -
If a physician presumes to take into consideration in his work whether life has value or not, the consequences are boundless and the physician becomes the most dangerous man in the state.
-- Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland -
How many physicians, scientists, teachers, pastors, missionaries, statesmen, musicians, businessmen, and notable contributors to society have been murdered in the womb?
-- Chuck Baldwin -
The daily clinical experience of thousands of massage therapists, physical therapists, and physicians strongly indicates that most of our common aches and pains - and many other puzzling physical complaints - are actually caused by trigger points, or small contraction knots, in the muscles of the body.
-- Clair Davies -
The goal of scientific physicians in their own science ... is to reduce the indeterminate. Statistics therefore apply only to cases in which the cause of the facts observed is still indeterminate.
-- Claude Bernard -
One quarter of Medicare beneficiaries have five or more chronic conditions, sees an average of 13 physicians each year, and fills 50 prescriptions per year.
-- Clayton Christensen -
Thus we work not in the light of public opinion but in the secrecy of the chamber; and perhaps the best of us are apt at times to forget the delicacies and sincerities which under these conditions are essential to harmony and honour.
-- Clifford Allbutt -
Your accumulated offences do not surpass the multitude of God's mercies: your wounds do not surpass the great Physician's skill.
-- Cyril of Jerusalem -
The best physicians are Dr. Diet, Dr. Quiet, and Dr. Merryman.
-- Daniel D. Palmer -
The glimpses of human strength and frailty that a physician sees are with me still.
-- Daniel Nathans -
I resisted using EHRs while an internist in Boston, as I wrote in my blog, ‘Why Be a Meaningful User.’ Over time, however, I found that working with health IT made me a better and safer physician. Most importantly, my patients received better, safer care and improved outcomes.
-- David Blumenthal -
Fewer than 40 percent of the alternative therapies are discussed with one's physician, In my personal view, the current status quo which could easily be described as 'Don't ask and don't tell,' needs to be abandoned -- that is not in anyone's best interest.
-- David Eisenberg -
Rogue internet pharmacies continue to pose a serious threat to the health and safety of Americans. Simply put, a few unethical physicians and pharmacists have become drug suppliers to a nation.
-- Dianne Feinstein -
The gross perversion and destruction of motherhood by the abortionist filled me with indignation, and awakened active antagonism. That the honorable term 'female physician' should be exclusively applied to those women who carried on this shocking trade seemed to me a horror. It was an utter degradation of what might and should become a noble position for women.
-- Elizabeth Blackwell -
There are some modern practitioners, who declaim against medical theory in general, not considering that to think is to theorize; and that no one can direct a method of cure to a person labouring under disease, without thinking, that is, without theorizing; and happy therefore is the patient, whose physician possesses the best theory.
-- Erasmus Darwin -
Every politician, clergyman, educator, or physician, in short, anyone dealing with human individuals, is bound to make grave mistakes if he ignores these two great truths of population zoology: (1) no two individuals are alike, and (2) both environment and genetic endowment make a contribution to nearly every trait.
-- Ernst Mayr -
Patients who are being kept alive by technology and want to end their lives already have a recognized constitutional right to stop any and all medical interventions, from respirators to antibiotics. They do not need physician-assisted suicide or euthanasia.
-- Ezekiel Emanuel -
Americans tend to endorse the use of physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia when the question is abstract and hypothetical.
-- Ezekiel Emanuel -
Reasoning based on cost has been strenuously resisted; it violated the Hippocratic Oath, was associated with rationing, and derided as putting a price on life... Indeed, many physicians were willing to lie to get patients what they needed from insurance companies that were trying to hold down costs.
-- Ezekiel Emanuel -
We set the treatment of bodies so high above the treatment of souls, that the physician occupies a higher place in society than the school-master.
-- Florence Nightingale -
In my own experience as a physician, I have not seen a miraculous healing, and I don't expect to see one.
-- Francis Collins -
I trained initially as a physical chemist, and then, after becoming interested in biology, I went to medical school and learned how to be a physician. So, I'm a physician scientist.
-- Francis Collins -
In the actual condition of medical science, the physician mostly plays the part of simple spectator of the sad episodes which his profession furnishes him.
-- Francois Magendie -
There are more old drunkards than old physicians.
-- Francois Rabelais -
As with eggs, there is no such thing as a poor doctor, doctors are either good or bad.
-- Fuller Albright -
Employment is nature's physician, and is essential to human happiness.
-- Galen -
Deceive not thy physician, confessor, nor lawyer.
-- George Herbert -
Wisdom is not mathematical, nor astronomical, nor zoological; when it talks too much of any one thing it ceases to be itself. There are wise physicists, but wisdom is not physical; there are wise physicians, but wisdom is not medical.
-- George Sarton -
I learned very early that our health is always impaired by some excess either of food or abstinence, and I never had any physician except myself.
-- Giacomo Casanova -
Magicians can do more by means of faith than physicians by the truth.
-- Giordano Bruno -
A physician is obligated to consider more than a diseased organ, more even than the whole man - he must view the man in his world.
-- Harvey Cushing -
Every Alchymist is a Physician or a Sope-boyler.
-- Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa -
Often the confidence of the patient in his physician does more for the cure of his disease than the physician with all his remedies. Reasserting the statement by Avicenna.
-- Henri de Mondeville -
After all we are merely the servants of the public, in spite of our M.D.'s and our hospital appointments.
-- Henry Howarth Bashford -
General practice is at least as difficult, if it is to be carried on well and successfully, as any special practice can be, and probably more so; for the G.P. has to live continually, as it were, with the results of his handiwork.
-- Henry Howarth Bashford -
A modern hospital is like Grand Central Station—all noise and hubbub, and is filled with smoking physicians, nurses, orderlies, patients and visitors. Soft drinks are sold on each floor and everybody guzzles these popular poisons. The stench of chemicals offends the nose, while tranquillizers substitute for quietness.
-- Herbert M. Shelton -
A physician can sometimes parry the scythe of death, but has no power over the sand in the hourglass.
-- Hester Lynch Piozzi -
The physician must have at his command a certain ready wit, as dourness is repulsive both to the healthy and the sick.
-- Hippocrates -
Of several remedies, the physician should choose the least sensational.
-- Hippocrates -
The dignity of a physician requires that he should look healthy, and as plump as nature intended him to be; for the common crowd consider those who are not of this excellent bodily condition to be unable to take care of themselves.
-- Hippocrates -
Physicians are many in title but very few in reality.
-- Hippocrates -
A physician who is a lover of wisdom is the equal to a god.
-- Hippocrates -
A physician without a knowledge of Astrology has no right to call himself a physician.
-- Hippocrates -
Physicians attend to the business of physicians, and workmen handle the tools of workmen. [Lat., Quod medicorum est Promittunt medici, tractant fabrilia fabri.]
-- Horace -
For each of the four hundred and four bodily ailments celebrated physicians have produced infallible remedies, but the malady which brings the greatest distress to mankind - to even the wisest and cleverest of us - is the plague of poverty.
-- Ihara Saikaku -
It would be a mistake, though, to consider care by family doctors or midwives inferior to that offered by obstetricians simply on the grounds that obstetricians need not refer care to a family physician or midwife if no complications develop during a course of labor.
-- Ina May Gaskin -
The medicalization of early diagnosis not only hampers and discourages preventative health-care but it also trains the patient-to-be to function in the meantime as an acolyte to his doctor. He learns to depend on the physician in sickness and in health. He turns into a life-long patient.
-- Ivan Illich -
The patient's autonomy always, always should be respected, even if it is absolutely contrary - the decision is contrary to best medical advice and what the physician wants.
-- Jack Kevorkian -
Such is the demographic paradox of a junior physician's relationship with his patients: I worry about how to extend their lives. This anxiety inevitably shortens my own.
-- Jacob M. Appel -
A person is not a democrat thanks to his ignorance of literature and the arts, nor an elitist because he or she has cultivated them. The possession of knowledge makes for unjust power over others only if used for that very purpose: a physician or lawyer or clergyman can exploit or humiliate others, or he can be a humanitarian and a benefactor. In any case, it is absurd to conjure up behind anybody who exploits his educated status the existence of an "elite" scheming to oppress the rest of us.
-- Jacques Barzun -
Temperance and labor are the two best physicians of man; labor sharpens the appetite, and temperance prevents from indulging to excess
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau -
On average, physicians interrupt patients within eighteen seconds of when they begin telling their story.
-- Jerome Groopman -
In turn, more physicians, hospitals, and other health care providers are severely limiting their practices, moving to other states, or simply not providing care.
-- Jim Ryun -
Silence is a trick when it imposes. Pedants and scholars, churchmen and physicians, abound in silent pride.
-- Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann -
Man without religion is a diseased creature, who would persuade himself he is well and needs not a physician; but woman without religion is raging and monstrous.
-- Johann Kaspar Lavater -
From the physician and lawyer keep not the truth hidden.
-- John Florio -
Physicians are the cobblers, rather the botchers, of men's bodies; as the one patches our tattered clothes, so the other solders our diseased flesh.
-- John Ford -
Physician, heal thyself. Teacher, teach yourself.
-- John of Kronstadt -
Preachers say, "Do as I say, not as I do." But if a physician had the same disease upon him that I have, and he should bid me do one thing and he do quite another, could I believe him?
-- John Selden -
The object of universities is not to make skillful lawyers, physicians or engineers. It is to make capable and cultivated human beings
-- John Stuart Mill -
Men are men before they are lawyers, or physicians, or merchants, or manufacturers; and if you make them capable and sensible men, they will make themselves capable and sensible lawyers or physicians.
-- John Stuart Mill -
Postpartum depression is very, very common but a lot of people just don't recognize that they have it. A lot of physicians also don't ask (patients) about it, so it's a problem from both sides,
-- Jose Gonzalez -
I was a bad practicing physician because I was never sure of the diagnosis or of the treatment.
-- Joshua Lederberg -
Our health care system is the finest in the world, but we still have too many uninsured Americans, too high prices for prescription drugs, and too many frivolous lawsuits driving our physicians out of state or out of business.
-- Judy Biggert -
By examining the tongue of the patient, physicians find out the diseases of the body, and philosophers the diseases of the mind.
-- Justin Martyr -
Hope awakens courage. He who can implant courage in the human soul is the best physician.
-- Karl Ludwig von Knebel -
It's such a long mission and we get to spend so much time in space... we're doing such exciting research. And I don't want to overemphasize the life science research, but as a physician the life science research that we're doing is extremely exciting.
-- Laurel Clark -
I hear from patients who say their doctor said, 'If you want to take Vitamin C, go ahead and do it. It won't harm you, and it may do you some good.' More and more physicians are getting convinced about the value of large doses of Vitamin C.
-- Linus Pauling -
Ibn Firnas was a polymath: a physician, a rather bad poet, the first to make glass from stones (quartz), a student of music, and inventor of some sort of metronome.
-- Lynn Townsend White, Jr. -
Physicians, when the cause of disease is discovered, consider that the cure is discovered.
-- Marcus Tullius Cicero -
The power of community to create health is far greater than any physician, clinic or hospital.
-- Mark Hyman, M.D. -
I quite like the transitions of being an actor, because you get to explore these little pockets of life. So if you're playing a builder you get to know about building, if you're playing a scientist or a physician or something you get to know about physics. And similarly with this world I like exploring their culture, that very sort of upper middle class, addictive... that's part of the reason I love it.
-- Matt Smith -
Never must the physician say, the disease is incurable. By that admission he denies God, our Creator; he doubts Nature with her profuseness of hidden powers and mysteries.
-- Morris Fishbein
