A Quote by William Osler

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

William Osler

Quote Topics

Good Great Medical Disease Patient Physician Treats

Quote Author

William Osler
Canadian - Scientist
July 12, 1849 - December 29, 1919

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

A physician who treats himself has a fool for a patient.

William Osler

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

Any physician who advertises a positive cure for any disease, who issues nostrum testimonials, who sells his services to a secret remedy, or who diagnoses and treats by mail patients he has never seen, is a quack.

Samuel Hopkins Adams

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

Christ did not come to civilize. He came to save. Civilization is not the solution; it does not destroy the works of the devil. All civilization aims at world improvement, at the gradual elimination of the curse; it is a process of evolution. It is like a man who is suffering from a terrible disease, and the physician who comes to help him gives him a salve to apply. He treats the skin symptoms but the source of the disease he never considers and never touches. Such is a boasted and progressive civilization. It is a delusion.

Arno C. Gaebelein

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

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

Ambrose Bierce

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?