Best 1306 quotes in «medicine quotes» category

Many a death was precipitated by the food, the job, or the medication whose main function was to postpone it.

Man's consciously lived fragility, individuality and relatedness make the experience of pain, of sickness and of death an integral part of his life. The ability to cope with this trio autonomously is fundamental to his health. As he becomes dependent on the management of his intimacy, he renounces his autonomy and his health must decline.

Maybe  there's no scientific evidence of desserts curing what ails you, but if you ask me, the jury's still out on science anyway.

Medicine rests upon four pillars—philosophy, astronomy, alchemy, and ethics. The first pillar is the philosophical knowledge of earth and water; the second, astronomy, supplies its full understanding of that which is of fiery and airy nature; the third is an adequate explanation of the properties of all the four elements—that is to say, of the whole cosmos—and an introduction into the art of their transformations; and finally, the fourth shows the physician those virtues which must stay with him up until his death, and it should support and complete the three other pillars.

Medicine is not a book but mind, not a business but life

Medicines ensures lengthy life but not necessarily healthy life.

McKusick's belief in this paradigm-the focus on disability rather than abnormalcy-was actualized in the treatment of patients in his clinic. Patients with dwarfism, for instance, were treated by an interdisciplinary team of genetic counselors, neurologists, orthopedic surgeons, nurses, and psychiatrists trained to focus on specific disabilities of persons with short stature. Surgical interventions were reserved to correct specific deformities as they arose. The goal was not to restore "normalcy"-but vitality, joy, and function. McKusic had rediscovered the founding principles of modern genetics in the realm of human pathology. In humans as in wild flies, genetic variations abounded. Here too genetic variants, environments, and gene-environment interactions ultimately collaborated to cause phenotypes-except in this case, the "phenotype" in question was disease. Here too some genes had partial penetrance and widely variable expressivity. One gene could cause many diseases, and one disease could be caused by many genes. And here too "fitness" could not be judged in absolutes. Rather the lack of fitness-illness [italicized, sic] in colloquial terms- was defined by the relative mismatch between an organism and environment.

Medicine is as close to love as it is to science, and its relationships matter even at the edge of life itself.

Medicine is my lawful wife, and literature is my mistress. When I get fed up with one, I spend the night with the other. Though it is irregular, it is less boring this way, and besides, neither of them loses anything through my infidelity.

Mine is a gruesome job, but for a scientist with a love for the mechanics of the human body, a great one.

Medication, surgery, and radiation are the weapons with which conventional medicine foolishly shoots the messengers called symptoms.

Medicine has until recently gone on the supposition that illness should be treated and cured by itself; yet voices are now heard which declare this view to be wrong, and demand the treatment of the sick person and not of the sickness. The same demand is forced upon us in the treatment of psychic suffering.

Many people from the UK have the impression that the USA medical profession is the best in the world. After a decade of treatment from them, I had concluded that it is a very expensive system that is riddle with incompetence and delivers mediocre care.

Most so-called doctors may boastfully proclaim to you that you must be concerned about making a lot of money in the practice of medicine, but keep in mind, that's precisely what practice of medicine is not about. So, reply to them with utmost realization of the purpose of medicine, "if you want to make a lot of money, then you should better go into business, not in medicine.

Much of the mystery surrounding drug action can be cleared up by recognizing that drugs affect only the rate at which biologic functions proceed; they do not change the basic nature of existing processes or create new functions.

My bleep goes off - it’s the morning SHO asking for handover. I’ve spent two hours in this room, the longest I’ve ever spent with a patient who wasn’t under anaesthetic. On the way home I phone my mum to tell her I love her.

My father, for whose skills as a surgeon I have the deepest respect, says, "The operation with the best outcome is the one you decide not to do." Knowing when not to operate, knowing when I am in over my head, knowing when to call for the assistance of a surgeon of my father's caliber--that kind of talent, that kind of "brilliance," goes unheralded.

My dear Gorgas, Instead of being simply satisfied to make friends and draw your pay, it is worth doing your duty, to the best of your ability, for duty’s sake; and in doing this, while the indolent sleep, you may accomplish something that will be of real value to humanity. Your good friend, Reed Dr. Walter Reed encouraging Dr. William Gorgas who went on to make history eradicating Yellow Fever in Havana, 1902 and Panama, 1906, liberating the entire North American continent from centuries of Yellow Fever epidemics.

Medicine is not a science; it is empiricism founded on a network of blunders.

My girl was mad and I loved her. Upon a night, she read my poetry; and kissing me madly she cried, ‘You are a genius, my love!’ To which I replied, ‘My girl,’ whispering, ‘Every doctor in this land with a prescription pad is more of a genius than I.

My heart itself is a wound, no medicine can cure it It deepens further if stared at, and hurts more if touched.

My mother had comforted me with tales ever since I was small. Sometimes they helped me peel a problem like an onion, or gave me ideas about what to do; other times, they calmed me so much that I would fall into a soothing sleep. My father used to say that her tales were better than the best medicine. Sighing, I burrowed into my mother's body like a child, knowing that the sound of her voice would be a balm on my heart.

Nature had found the perfect place to hide the yellow fever virus. It seeded itself and grew in the blood, blooming yellow and running red.

No matter who you were in sixteenth-century Europe, you could be sure of two things: you would be lucky to reach fifty years of age, and you could expect a life of discomfort and pain. Old age tires the body by thirty-five, Erasmus lamented, but half the population did not live beyond the age of twenty. There were doctors and there was medicine, but there does not seem to have been a great deal of healing. Anyone who could afford to seek a doctor's aid did so eagerly, but the doctor was as likely to maim or kill as to cure. His potions were usually noxious and sometimes fatal—but they could not have been as terrible and traumatic as the contemporary surgical methods. The surgeon and the Inquisitor differed only in their motivation: otherwise, their batteries of knives, saws, and tongs for slicing, piercing, burning, and amputating were barely distinguishable. Without any anesthetic other than strong liquor, an operation was as bad as the torments of hell.

One of the lies of patriarchy is that the sickness is our fault as individuals. That sickness is shameful and should be suffered in silence, so as not to bring others down. When in truth sickness is all around us all the time. It runs down family lines, it runs through communities, it runs along rivers, it is carried in the air, by touch. Illness, mental or physical, is very, very rarely an individual thing. The shame and fear we carry in silence is a burden to our healing.

One of the most common and most dangerous misbeliefs is that it is impossible for someone to be stupid just because they are a doctor or a lawyer.

People try to treat their illnesses without first trying to understand the cause of them. Behind every effect there is a cause. You can never eliminate an effect without first understanding its cause.

People who foster dependence on illicit drugs such as heroin are regarded among the most unscrupulous pariahs of modern civilisation. In contrast, pushers of licit drugs tend to be viewed as altruistically motivated purveyors of social good.

Possibility is everything that has ever happened. The purpose of science is to find out where the limits of possibility end. When we have achieved that — and we shall — there will be no more magic, no more superstition, there will just be what is. Once it was impossible that this globe we are on wasn't flat. It is not for science — and certainly not for medicine — to flatter our expectations of Nature. Quite the opposite.

Prayer is better than pills.

Prevention is not only not better than cure; prevention is even worse than disease. Prevention means being an invalid for life, with the extra exasperation of being quite well.

President Trump’s lifestyle is almost the complete opposite of what most health consultants advise their clients.

Psychics, astrology, tarot cards - all these mystical non-sense are signs of a weak mind. Whenever such garbage starts grabbing hold of you, seek the help of a physician or therapist.

Radionics was conceived as a diagnostic and treatment technology at a time when modern electronic theory and biomedicine had not become the dominant sciences they are today. Early radionic devices incorporated the new discoveries of radio and electronics into their design. During that period, the functional assumptions of radionic technology did not seem as implausible as it does today. However, it wasn't long before radionics became outmoded and completely non-scientific. As Mizrach has noted, radionics continued to appropriate the methods of orthodox science into its design and terminology, making the probability of understanding what it could accomplish even more difficult to assess. I will examine this appropriation in a spirit of tolerance, given the state of electronics and medicine circa 1910, when radionics was first discovered. I will do so in order to shift the focus of this interesting technology from the scientific to the metaphysical, where the reader not limited by a need for scientific approval can evaluate it. My aim is to provide a reasonable means of evaluating radionic technology as an artistic methodology.

Rather than being medicalized or romanticized, mental disorders, or mental dis-eases, should be understood as nothing less or more than what they are, an expression of our deepest human nature. By recognizing their traits in ourselves and reflecting upon them, we may be able both to contain them and to put them to good use. This is, no doubt, the highest form of genius.

My sadness is beautiful. It infuses everything I do. It is at the core of my identity and always has been, just as happiness is in some people. I refuse to be told that it's a flaw. I will not mute it with medications for the sake of society. I will hold it close to me and celebrate it rightfully while the rest of the world fails to see it for what it is and it will be their loss.

Naturopathic medicine is the biggest threat to modern corporate healthcare.

No doctor knows everything. There's a reason why it's called "practising" medicine.

Not every sickness is psychosomatic, but a weak psyche can indeed make a sickness worse.

Nothing is wrong in taking medicine when you’re sick, but something is wrong if It is been taking by you to cure the headache of another.

Not only a man without hand is handicapped but also a man without health.

Observing the medical histories of various neurological syndromes is like observing the fascinating nerve cells of the human brain in action, while they construct what we so proudly call the Human Consciousness. They remind us of the overwhelming aspects of human silliness. They remind us how such a simple natural response of the human Biology, is misinterpreted as the “last surviving mystery” of this planet.

One American in seven has no coverage, and one in three younger than sixty-five will lose coverage at some point in the next two years. These are people who aren't poor or old enough to qualify for government programs but whose jobs aren't good enough to provide benefits either.

One professional I never wish to see is doctor.

Other pressing problems with the current medical model [of mental disorder] is that it encourages false epidemics, most glaringly in bipolar disorder and ADHD, and the wholesale exportation of Western mental disorders and Western accounts of mental disorder. Taken together, this is leading to a pandemic of Western disease categories and treatments, while undermining the variety and richness of the human experience.

Our health care approaches squander billions on extravagant treatment regimes that end up accomplishing little, as a society we refuse to adopt the small, even tiny adjustments that could easily reduce the clawing uncertainties that now degrade millions.

Remember that in pursuing medicine you have assumed responsibility for a sublime mission. Persever, with God in your heart, with the teachings of your father and your mother always in your memory, with love and devotion for the abandoned, with faith and enthusiasm, deaf to praises and criticisms, steadfast against envy, and inclined only to do good. (St. Joseph Moscati to a young doctor, p. 140)

Pain is a Medical Orphan. Perhaps because it has traditionally been considered the consequence of disease or injury, not an illness in itself, and not specific to a body organ or site, no single specialty has accepted, as a pressing goal or major responsibility, a commitment to the elimination of pain. Perhaps there’s a little too much “man up” sentiment out there, embracing the words of Nietzsche: “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.

Recent sociological findings indicate that while "whites have largely abandoned principled racism... they have not necessarily given up negative racial stereotypes" or "negative sentiments and beliefs about African Americans.

Science is constantly providing new and ever more powerful tools. Current imaging techniques leave no part of the body unexposed. None of these, however, can reveal the basis of an aching heart. This is left to the art of medicine, which has remained largely unchanged over millennia. Its most powerful tool is listening to a patient’s words.