medicine

The desire to take medicine is perhaps the greatest feature which distinguishes man from animals.

In my youth once when I had a really exquisite toothache I suddenly realized that my tooth had temporarily become the centre of the universe that its outcries were more important than anything else and that I would do absolutely anything to placate it. And as one gets older and starts worrying about cancer one becomes more and more conscious of the fragility of the whole body and with that consciousness comes a new and degrading kind of fear. It is degrading because it strengthens the desire to survive on any terms and the desire to survive on any terms is the most base of all our instincts.

The sorrow which has no vent in tears may make other organs weep.

Those in the United States who by and large have the best medical care and advice readily available to them at the least expense are the families of the specialists in internal medicine. These families use less medicine and undergo less surgery on the whole than any other group rich or poor.

What some call health if purchased by perpetual anxiety about diet isn't much better than tedious disease.

It is very difficult to slow down. The practice of medicine is like the heart muscle's contraction - it's all or none.

The placebo cures 30% of patients - no matter what they have.

A person seldom falls sick but the bystanders are animated with a faint hope that he will die.

Imprisoned in every fat man a thin one is wildly signalling to be let out.

Every surgeon carries about him a little cemetery in which from time to time he goes to pray a cemetery of bitterness and regret of which he seeks the reason for certain of his failures.

Every invalid is a physician.

There are some remedies worse than the disease.

Nothing is more essential in the treatment of serious disease than the liberation of the patient from panic and forboding.

Man should not strive to eliminate his complexes but to get in accord with them they are legitimately what directs his contact in the world.

One of the first duties of the physician is to educate the masses not to take medicine.

Symptoms then are in reality nothing but the cry from suffering organs.

So many come to the sickroom thinking of themselves as men of science fighting disease and not as healers with a little knowledge helping nature to get a sick man well.

Sickness is a sort of early old age it teaches us a diffidence in our earthly state.