Who ever said that doctors are truthful or even intelligent? You're getting a lot if they know their profession. Don't ask any more from them. They're only human, after all.
—Marjorie Karmel
The… patient should be made to understand that he or she must take charge of his own life. Don't take your body to the doctor as if he were a repair shop.
—Quentin Regestein
In order to be a good doctor a man must also have a good character; that is to say, whatever weaknesses and foibles he may have, he must love his fellow human beings in the concrete and desire their good before his own.
—W. H. Auden
One day Joseph Lister was summoned to assist a wealthy lord with a fishbone that had lodged at the back of his throat. After Lister had skillfully removed the obstruction, the grateful patient asked him what he was owed. "My lord," Lister suggested, "suppose we settle for half of what you would be willing to give me if the bone were still lodged in your throat.
—The Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes
Financial ruin from medical bills is almost exclusively an American disease.
—Roul Turley
The field of Western medicine has become literally nothing but medicine. Doctors are on their way out, to be replaced by self-serve pharmaceutical vending machines.
—Grey Livingston
In the sick room, ten cents' worth of human understanding equals ten dollars' worth of medical science.
—Martin H. Fischer
In medicine, as in statecraft and propaganda, words are sometimes the most powerful drugs we can use.
—Sara Murray Jordan
We look for medicine to be an orderly field of knowledge and procedure. But it is not. It is an imperfect science, an enterprise of constantly changing knowledge, uncertain information, fallible individuals, and at the same time lives on the line. There is science in what we do, yes, but also habit, intuition, and sometimes plain old guessing. The gap between what we know and what we aim for persists. And this gap complicates everything we do.
—Atul Gawande
There is no alternative medicine. There is only medicine that works and medicine that doesn't work.
—John Diamond
Water, air, and cleanness are the chief articles in my pharmacy.
—Napoleon Bonaparte
If a lot of cures are suggested for a disease it means that the disease is incurable.
—Anton Chekhov
Fasting and natural diet, though essentially unknown [in today's U.S.] as a therapy, should be the first treatment when someone discovers that she or he has a medical problem. It should not be applied only to the most advanced cases, as is present practice. Whether the patient has a cardiac condition, hypertension, autoimmune disease, fibroids, or asthma, he or she must be informed that fasting and natural, plant-based diets are a viable alternative to conventional therapy, and an effective one. The time may come when not offering this substantially more effective nutritional approach will be considered malpractice.
—Joel Fuhrman, M.D.