Top 505 Quotes & Sayings by Famous Physicians - Page 3

The chemists are a strange class of mortals, impelled by an almost insane impulse to seek their pleasures amid smoke and vapor, soot and flame, poisons and poverty; yet among all these evils I seem to live so sweetly that may I die if I were to change places with the Persian king.

Botany, the eldest daughter of medicine.

Anatomy is to physiology as geography is to history; it describes the theatre of events.

Of all the things you wear, your expression is the most important.

The doctor may also learn more about the illness from the way the patient tells the story than from the story itself.

Learn to listen with your fingers.

The knowledge of Natural-History, being Observation of Matters of Fact, is more certain than most others, and in my slender Opinion, less subject to Mistakes than Reasonings, Hypotheses, and Deductions are; ... These are things we are sure of, so far as our Senses are not fallible; and which, in probability, have been ever since the Creation, and will remain to the End of the World, in the same Condition we now find them.

The brain is the man; its health is essential for normal living; its disorders are surely the most profound of human miseries; and its destruction annihilates a person humanly, however intact his body.

And it has been sarcastically said, that there is a wide difference between a good physician and a bad one, but a small difference between a good physician and no physician at all; by which it is meant to insinuate, that the mischievous officiousness of art does commonly more than counterbalance any benefit derivable from it.

It has occurred to me that possibly the white corpuscles may have the office of picking up and digesting bacterial organisms when by any means they find their way into the blood. The propensity exhibited by the leukocytes for picking up inorganic granules is well known, and that they may be able not only to pick up but to assimilate, and so dispose of, the bacteria which come in their way does not seem to me very improbable in view of the fact that amoebae, which resemble them so closely, feed upon bacteria and similar organisms.

Teleology is a lady without whom no biologist can live. Yet he is ashamed to show himself with her in public.

By itself, practice does not make perfect. Those of us with a ten-year-old son practicing the trumpet may understand that.

A very common symptom in maniacal conditions is erotic excitement. This varies from mere coquetry, a somewhat extended application of the command "love one another", an undue attention to the opposite sex, and so forth, up to the extreme of salacity, when the mind is wholly occupied by the urgent sexual appetite, and all restraint is abandoned.

Courage is a moral quality; it is not a chance gift of nature like an aptitude for games. It is a cold choice between two alternatives, the fixed resolve not to quit; an act of renunciation which must be made not once but many times by the power of the will.

Homosexuality is a psychological and psychiatric disorder, there is no question about it. It is a purple menace that is threatening the proper design of gender distinctions in society.

Whether or not you agree that trimming and cooking are likely to lead on to downright forgery, there is little to support the argument that trimming and cooking are less reprehensible and more forgivable. Whatever the rationalization is, in the last analysis one can no more than be a bit dishonest than one can be a little bit pregnant. Commit any of these three sins and your scientific career is in jeopardy and deserves to be.

I feel that the recent ruling of the United States Army and Navy regarding the refusal of colored blood donors is an indefensible one from any point of view. As you know, there is no scientific basis for the separation of the bloods of different races except on the basis of the individual blood types or groups.

Wine ...moderately drunken it doth quicken a man's wits, It doth comfort the heart.

For, as the substance of the brain, like that of the other solids of our body, is nearly incompressible, the quantity of blood within the head must be the same, or very nearly the same, at all times, whether in health or disease, in life or after death.

We are permitted to suppose that the relatively small size of the female brain depends in part upon her physical inferiority and in part upon her intellectual inferiority.

You have to know what's happening in the locker rooms, you have to know what's happening at the grass-roots level. That's the best way to work.

In my country (Belgium), if you sit beside the phone long enough, it will ring and you will be invited to play rugby for Belgium!

Who Are You? What do you want? Where Are You Going? Who do you serve and who do you trust?

We are many small puppets moved by fate and fortune through strings unseen by us; therefore, if it is so as I think, one has to prepare oneself with a good heart and indifference to accept things coming towards us, because they cannot be avoided, and to oppose them requires a violence that tears our souls too deeply, and it seems that both fortune and men are always busy in affairs for our dislike because the former is blind and the latter only think of their interest.

You can have such an open mind that it is too porous to hold a conviction.

Widows are divided into two classes - the bereaved and relieved.

I hear hate. I hear people who clearly don't have a great understanding of the American dream. That the American dream is based on hard work and dedication, determination, resilience, excitement, mentorship, help and love for each other.

Within a bony labrinthean cave, Reached by the pulse of the aerial wave, This sibyl, sweet, and Mystic Sense is found, Muse, that presides o'er all the Powers of Sound.

Truth is orphan without matter and matter is impotent without truth.

I regard irreligious people as pioneers. If there had been no priesthood the world would have advanced ten thousand times better than it has now.

The price of metaphor is eternal vigilance.

Google loves brands - build one.

Only after realising that routine immunisations were dangerous did I achieve a substantial drop in infant death rates.

I learned that economics was not an exact science and that the most erudite men would analyze the economic ills of the world and derive a totally different conclusion.

The function of the artist is to disturb. His duty is to arouse the sleeper, to shake the complacent pillars of the world.In a world terrified of change, he preaches revolution-the principle of life. He is an agitator, a disturber of the peace-quick, impatient, positive, restless and disquieting. He is the creative spirit of life working in the the soul of man.

I think the most important thing is in life, it's all about balance. It's balance between foods you like and nutrition.

The generation of seeds ... is therefore marvelous and analogous to the other productions of living things. For first of all an umbilicus appears. ... Its extremity gradually expands and after gathering a colliquamentous ichor becomes analogous to an amnion. ... In the course of time the seed or fetus begins to become visible.

The only known cure for fear is faith.

Dear gentlemen, let me die a natural death.

Those who work standing ... carpenters, sawyers, carvers, blacksmiths, masons ... are liable to varicose veins ... [because] the strain on the muscles is such that the circulation of the blood is retarded. Standing even for a short time proves exhausting compared with walking and running though it be for a long time ... Nature delights and is restored by alternating and varied actions.

Rose of the desert! thou art to me An emblem of stainless purity,-- Of those who, keeping their garments white, Walk on through life with steps aright.

No matter how well-born, how intelligent, how highly educated, how virtuous, how rich, how refined, the women of to-day constitutea political class below that of every man, no matter how base-born, how stupid, how ignorant, how vicious, how poverty-stricken, how brutal. The pauper in the almshouse may vote; the lady who devotes her philanthropic thought to making that almshouse habitable, may not. The tramp who begs cold victuals in the kitchen may vote; the heiress who feeds him and endows universities may not.

Historians of the future will find it incredible that we mutilated babies by cutting off the end of their penises in the name of medicine. There are now serious concerns this routine procedure may actually deprive adult men of a vital part of their sexual sensitivity.

It's critically important that people trust you during a public health crisis.

None of the prophets old, So lofty or so bold! No form of danger shakes his dauntless breast; In loneliness sublime He dares confront the time, And speak the truth, and give the world no rest No kingly threat can cowardize his breath, He with majestic step goes forth to meet his death.

The woman who needs to be liberated most is the woman in every man, and the man who needs to be liberated most is the man in every woman

You cannot immunize sick, malnourished children and expect them to get away with it. You'll kill far more children than would have died from natural infection...It needs to be appreciated that children in developing countries are at a much greater risk of complications from vaccination and from mercury toxicity...because poor nutrition, parasitic and bacterial infections and low birth weight.

The skeptic, being a lover of his kind, desires to cure by speech, as best he can, the self-conceit and rashness of the dogmatists.

I want to make my contribution to humanity so that there will be no more Auschwitzes. Children who are born wanted and are given love and attention will not build concentration camps.

You wouldn't believe how many FDA officials or relatives or acquaintances of FDA officials come to see me as patients in Hanover. You wouldn't believe this, or directors of the AMA, or ACA, or the presidents of orthodox cancer institutes. That's the fact

People love to hear good news about their bad habits.

The best servant does his work unseen.

Public health is purchasable. Within a few natural and important limitations any community can determine its own health.

Youth fades, love droops, the leaves of friendship fall; A mother's secret hope outlives them all.

There is no future in any job. The future lies in the man who holds the job.

I gleaned more practical psychology and psychiatry from the Bible, than from all other books!

If my efforts have led to greater success than usual, this is due, I believe, to the fact that during my wanderings in the field of medicine, I have strayed onto paths where the gold was still lying by the wayside. It takes a little luck to be able to distinguish gold from dross, but that is all.

Taking advantage of the method, found by me, of the black staining of the elements of the brain, staining obtained by the prolonged immersion of the pieces, previously hardened with potassium or ammonium bichromate, in a 0.50 or 1.0% solution of silver nitrate, I happened to discover some facts concerning the structure of the cerebral gray matter that I believe merit immediate communication.

During the long ages of class rule, which are just beginning to cease, only one form of sovereignty has been assigned to all men--that, namely, over all women. Upon these feeble and inferior companions all men were permitted to avenge the indignities they suffered from so many men to whom they were forced to submit.

Another source of fallacy is the vicious circle of illusions which consists on the one hand of believing what we see, and on the other in seeing what we believe.