A Quote by Ambrose Bierce

Prescription: A physician's guess at what will best prolong the situation with least harm to the patient.

Ambrose Bierce

Quote Topics

Medical Best Guess Harm Least Patient Physician Prescription Prolong Situation Will

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 human body experiences a powerful gravitational pull in the direction of hope. That is why the patient's hopes are the physician's secret weapon. They are the hidden ingredients in any prescription.

Norman Cousins

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

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

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

I am like a doctor. I have written a prescription to help the patient. If the patient doesn't want all the pills I've recommended, that's up to him. But I must warn that next time I will have to come as a surgeon with a knife.

Javier Perez de Cuellar

The physician, to the extent he is a physician, considers only the good of the patient in what he prescribes, and his own not at all

Plato

As a physician, I see the earth as a patient in the intensive care unit. We have an acute clinical crisis on our hands and must take urgent action. My prescription for survival is that the American people rise up as they did in the 1980s, when 80 percent of Americans supported the nuclear weapons freeze.

Helen Caldicott

When he can render no further aid, the physician alone can mourn as a man with his incurable patient. This is the physician's sad lot.

Aretaeus of Cappadocia

As a former professional patient advocate, I believe prescription drugs are an essential part of high-quality medical treatment, and I supported enactment of the Medicare Prescription Drug and Modernization Act.

Sue Kelly

Otis Brawley is one of America's truly outstanding physician scientists. In How We Do Harm, he challenges all of us-- physicians, patients, and communities-- to recommit ourselves to the pledge to 'do no harm.'

David Satcher

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

Is it not also true that no physician, in so far as he is a physician, considers or enjoins what is for the physician's interest, but that all seek the good of their patients? For we have agreed that a physician strictly so called, is a ruler of bodies, and not a maker of money, have we not?

Plato

Never vote for the best candidate, vote for the one who will do the least harm.