The desire to take medicine is perhaps the greatest feature which distinguishes man from animals.
—William Osler (1849–1919) Canadian Physician
For what Harley Street specialist has time to understand the body, let alone the mind or both in combination, when he is a slave to thirteen thousand a year?
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English Novelist
Cure the disease and kill the patient.
—Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English Philosopher
There are more old drunkards than old physicians.
—Francois Rabelais (1494–1553) French Humanist, Satirist
By medicine life may be prolonged, yet death will seize the doctor too.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
I was under medication when I made the decision not to burn the tapes.
—Richard Nixon (1913–94) American Head of State, Lawyer
Time is generally the best doctor.
—Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso) (c.43 BCE–c.18 CE) Roman Poet
There is no medicine to cure hatred.
—African Proverb
Sleep is better than medicine.
—Anonymous
The doctor should be opaque to his patients and, like a mirror, should show them nothing but what is shown to him.
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian Psychiatrist, Psychoanalytic
Many of us will die for science without knowing it.
—Gerhard Kocher (b.1939) Swiss Publicist, Aphorist
The poets did well to conjoin music and medicine, because the office of medicine is but to tune the curious harp of man’s body.
—Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English Philosopher
He has been a doctor a year now and has had two patients, no, three, I think—yes, it was three; I attended their funerals.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
The best of all medicines is resting and fasting
—Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) American Political Leader, Inventor, Diplomat
Doctors are men who prescribe medicines of which they know little, to cure diseases of which they know less, in human beings of whom they know nothing.
—Voltaire (1694–1778) French Philosopher, Author
Time rushes towards us with its hospital tray of infinitely varied narcotics, even while it is preparing us for its inevitably fatal operation.
—Tennessee Williams (1911–83) American Playwright
The best cure for the body is a quiet mind.
—Napoleon I (1769–1821) Emperor of France
Medicine knows no limits, especially not its own.
—Gerhard Kocher (b.1939) Swiss Publicist, Aphorist
Vaccination is the medical sacrament corresponding to baptism.
—Samuel Butler
The disease and its medicine are like two factions in a besieged town; they tear one another to pieces, but both unite against their common enemy, Nature.
—Francis Jeffrey, Lord Jeffrey (1773–1850) Scottish Judge, Literary Critic
Medicine is a collection of uncertain prescriptions, the results of which, taken collectively, are more fatal than useful to mankind.
—Napoleon I (1769–1821) Emperor of France
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 (428 BCE–347 BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher, Mathematician, Educator
I observe the physician with the same diligence as the disease.
—John Donne (1572–1631) English Poet, Cleric
We seem ambitious God’s whole work to undo.—With new diseases on ourselves we war, and with new physic, a worse engine far.
—John Donne (1572–1631) English Poet, Cleric
He who lives by medical prescriptions lives miserably.
—Common Proverb
Water, air, and cleanliness are the chief articles in my pharmacopoeia.
—Napoleon I (1769–1821) Emperor of France
God heals and the doctor takes the fee.
—Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) American Political Leader, Inventor, Diplomat
Surgeons must be very careful. When they take the knife, underneath their fine incisions, stirs the culprit—life!
—Emily Dickinson (1830–86) American Poet
The only medicine that does women more good than harm is dress.
—Jean Paul (1763–1825) German Novelist, Humorist
There are three subjects on which the knowledge of the medical profession in general is woefully weak; they are manners, morals, and medicine.
—Gerald F. Lieberman