KY Web » Health » Surgeons

Quotations on Medical Subjects

In nothing do men more nearly approach the gods than in giving health to men.
~ Cicero

My doctor is nice; every time I see him, I'm ashamed of what I think of doctors in general.
~ Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966

The greatest mistake in the treatment of diseases is that there are physicians for the body and physicians for the soul, although the two cannot be separated.
~ Plato

In the sick room, ten cents worth of human understanding equals ten dollars worth of medical science.
~ Martin H. Fischer

Restore a man to his health, his purse lies open to thee.
~ Robert Burton

I got the bill for my surgery.
Now I know what those doctors were wearing masks for.
~ James H. Boren

A hospital should also have a recovery room adjoining the cashier's office.
~ Francis O'Walsh

Did God who gave us flowers and trees, Also provide the allergies?
~ E.Y. Harburg, A Nose Is a Nose Is a Nose, 1965

I learned a long time ago that minor surgery is when they do the operation on someone else, not you.
~ Bill Walton

I wonder why you can always read a doctor's bill and you can never read his prescription.
~ Finley Peter Dunne

You have a cough?
Go home tonight, eat a whole box of Ex-Lax - tomorrow you'll be afraid to cough.
~ Pearl Williams

To array a man's will against his sickness is the supreme art of medicine.
~ Henry Ward Beecher

A doctor whose breath smells has no right to medical opinion.
~ Martin H. Fischer

Surgeons must be very careful When they take the knife!
Underneath their fine incisions Stirs the Culprit - Life!
~ Emily Dickinson

After two days in the hospital, I took a turn for the nurse.
~ W.C. Fields

A hypochondriac is one who has a pill for everything except what ails him.
~ Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966

The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.
~ Voltaire (François Marie Arouet)

A doctor must work eighteen hours a day and seven days a week.
If you cannot console yourself to this, get out of the profession.
~ Martin H. Fischer

It is sometimes as dangerous to be run into by a microbe as by a trolley car.
~ J.J. Walsh

God heales, and the Physitian hath the thankes.
~ George Herbert, Outlandish Proverbs

I firmly believe that if the whole materia medica could be sunk to the bottom of the sea, it would be all the better for mankind and all the worse for the fishes.
~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

Doctors think a lot of patients are cured who have simply quit in disgust.
~ Don Herold

The only equipment lack in the modern hospital?
Somebody to meet you at the entrance with a handshake!
~ Martin H. Fischer

The worst thing about medicine is that one kind makes another necessary.
~ Elbert Hubbard

Throw physic to the dogs; I'll none of it.
~ William Shakespeare

I recently became a Christian Scientist.
It was the only health plan I could afford.
~ Betsy Salkind

Poisons and medicine are oftentimes the same substance given with different intents.
~ Peter Mere Latham

Diagnosis is not the end, but the beginning of practice.
~ Martin H. Fischer

Financial ruin from medical bills is almost exclusively an American disease.
~ Roul Turley

A man who cannot work without his hypodermic needle is a poor doctor.
The amount of narcotic you use is inversely proportional to your skill.
~ Martin H. Fischer

Better to hunt in fields, for health unbought, Than fee the doctor for a nauseous draught, The wise, for cure, on exercise depend; God never made his work for man to mend.
~ John Dryden

The patient does not care about your science;
what he wants to know is, can you cure him?
~ Martin H. Fischer

Disease is war with the laws of our being, and all war, as a great general has said, is hell.
~ Lewis G. Janes

No physician is really good before he has killed one or two patients.
~ Hindu Proverb

Only one rule in medical ethics need concern you - that action on your part which best conserves the interests of your patient.
~ Martin H. Fischer

Pharmaceutical companies will soon rule the world if we keep letting them believe we are a happy, functional society so long as all the women are on Prozac, all children on Ritalin, and all men on Viagra.
~ Terri Guillemets

When you no longer know what headache, heartache, or stomachache means without cistern punctures, electrocardiograms and six x-ray plates, you are slipping.
~ Martin H. Fischer

Who ever thought up the word Mammogram?
Every time I hear it, I think I'm supposed to put my breast in an envelope and send it to someone.
~ Jan King

Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.
~ Erma Bombeck

Here's good advice for practice:
go into partnership with nature;
she does more than half the work and asks none of the fee.
~ Martin H. Fischer

Physiology is the stepchild of medicine.
That is why Cinderella often turns out the queen.
~ Martin H. Fischer

Our profession is the only one which works unceasingly to annihilate itself.
~ Martin H. Fischer

On J-Day our profession will have a lot to answer for!
We might at least have withheld our hands instead of making them work against God.
~ Martin H. Fischer

The public blabbers about preventative medicine, but will neither appreciate nor pay for it.
You get paid for what you cure.
~ Martin H. Fischer

Nowadays the clinical history too often weighs more than the man.
~ Martin H. Fischer

Formerly, when religion was strong and science weak, men mistook magic for medicine;
now, when science is strong and religion weak, men mistake medicine for magic.
~ Thomas Szasz, The Second Sin, 1973