A Quote by Ambrose Bierce

DIAGNOSIS, n. A physician's forecast of disease by the patient's pulse and purse.

Ambrose Bierce

Quote Topics

Diagnosis Disease Forecast Patient Physician Pulse Purse

Quote Author

Ambrose Bierce
American - Journalist
June 24, 1842 - 1914

Doctor Johnson said, that in sickness there were three things that were material; the physician, the disease, and the patient: and if any two of these joined, then they get the victory; for, Ne Hercules quidem contra duos [Not even Hercules himself is a match for two]. If the physician and the patient join, then down goes the disease; for then the patient recovers: if the physician and the disease join, that is a strong disease; and the physician mistaking the cure, then down goes the patient: if the patient and the disease join, then down goes the physician; for he is discredited.

Francis Bacon

The art has three factors, the disease, the patient, the physician. The physician is the servant of the art. The patient must cooperate with the physician in combatting the disease.

Hippocrates

The first question an Ayurvedic physician asks is not 'What disease does my patient have?' but 'Who is my patient?' By 'who,' the physician does not mean your name, but how you are constituted.

Deepak Chopra

The good physician treats the disease; the great physician treats the patient who has the disease.

William Osler

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

As any doctor can tell you, the most crucial step toward healing is having the right diagnosis. If the disease is precisely identified, a good resolution is far more likely. Conversely, a bad diagnosis usually means a bad outcome, no matter how skilled the physician.

Andrew Weil

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

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

More than one skillful physician has said that if one asks the right questions, the patient will make the diagnosis for you in his or her own words.

Andrew Weil

The physician should not treat the disease but the patient who is suffering from it

Maimonides

The patient must combat the disease along with the physician.

Hippocrates

When Death lurks at the door, the physician is considered as a God. When danger has been overcome, the physician is looked upon as an angel. When the patient begins to convalesce, the physician becomes a mere human. When the physician asks for his fees, he is considered as the devil himself.

Hendrik Goltzius

When a physician is called to a patient, he should decide on the diagnosis, then the prognosis, and then the treatment. ... Physicians must know the evolution of the disease, its duration and gravity in order to predict its course and outcome. Here statistics intervene to guide physicians, by teaching them the proportion of mortal cases, and if observation has also shown that the successful and unsuccessful cases can be recognized by certain signs, then the prognosis is more certain.

Claude Bernard

A physician is not angry at the intemperance of a mad patient, nor does he take it ill to be railed at by a man in fever. Just so should a wise man treat all mankind, as a physician does his patient, and look upon them only as sick and extravagant.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Many modern (so-called) Reformers are just as dangerous as the physician who makes a wrong diagnosis of a disease. They see the trouble from without and prescribe external remedies, while the cause of the trouble is within and needs internal treatment.