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Medicine and Sickness Quotes and Quotations
 Nature heals under the auspices of the medical profession.  The biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis, but rather the feeling of being unwanted. Doctors are busy playing God when so few of us have the qualifications. And besides, the job is taken. Don't defy the diagnosis, try to defy the verdict. Nothing is more essential in the treatment of serious disease than the liberation of the patient from panic and forboding. Sickness is felt, but health not at all. The placebo cures 30% of patients - no matter what they have. To cure sometimes, to relieve often, to comfort always. Vasectomy means not ever having to say you're sorry. What some call health, if purchased by perpetual anxiety about diet, isn't much better than tedious disease. It is much more important to know what sort of a patient has a disease than what sort of a disease a patient has. The desire to take medicine is perhaps the greatest feature which distinguishes man from animals. The doctor, if he forgets he is only the assistant to nature and zealously takes over the stage, may so add to what nature is already doing well that he actually throws the patient into shock by the vigour he adds to nature's forces. God heals, and the doctor takes the fees. The history of medicine is a story of amazing foolishness and amazing intelligence. If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament. Abortion is advocated only by persons who have themselves been born. Man should not strive to eliminate his complexes, but to get in accord with them; they are legitimately what directs his contact in the world. The body never lies. All that is really necessary for survival of the fittest, it seems, is an interest in life, good, bad or peculiar. The only thing to know is how to use your neurosis. Common sense is in medicine the master workman. The prime goal is to alleviate suffering, and not to prolong life. And if your treatment does not alleviate suffering, but only prolongs life, that treatment should be stopped. As long as men are liable to die and are desirous to live, a physician will be made fun of, but he will be well paid. After dinner, rest a while, after supper walk a mile. Imprisoned in every fat man, a thin one is wildly signalling to be let out. Wherever a doctor cannot do good, he must be kept from doing harm. The student is to collect and evaluate facts. The facts are locked up in the patient. The practice of medicine is a thinker's art, the practice of surgery a plumber's. Every surgeon carries about him a little cemetery, in which from time to time he goes to pray, a cemetery of bitterness and regret, of which he seeks the reason for certain of his failures. Symptoms, then, are in reality nothing but the cry from suffering organs. I observe the physician with the same diligence as the disease. The very first requirement in a hospital is that it should do the sick no harm. There are some remedies worse than the disease. Sickness is a sort of early old age; it teaches us a diffidence in our earthly state. To be sick is to enjoy monarchal prerogatives. Every invalid is a physician. 'Tis healthy to be sick sometimes. Our doctor would never really operate unless it was necessary. He was just that way. If he didn't need the money, he wouldn't lay a hand on you. Physicians of the Utmost Fame were called at once, but when they came they answered, as they took their fees, 'There is no cure for this disease.' A good gulp of hot whisky at bedtime - it's not very scientific, but it helps. I enjoy convalescence. It is the part that makes the illness worthwhile. A general flavour of mild decay, but nothing local, as one may say. One of the first duties of the physician is to educate the masses not to take medicine. I was sick, and ye visited me. - Bible There is a great difference between a good physician and a bad one; yet very little between a good one and none at all. Nature, time and patience are the three great physicians. - Proverbs So many come to the sickroom thinking of themselves as men of science fighting disease and not as healers with a little knowledge helping nature to get a sick man well. No doctor takes pleasure in the health even of his friends. It requires a great deal of faith for a man to be cured by his own placebos. It is very difficult to slow down. The practice of medicine is like the heart muscle's contraction - it's all or none. Those in the United States who, by and large, have the best medical care and advice readily available to them at the least expense are the families of the specialists in internal medicine. These families use less medicine and undergo less surgery on the whole than any other group, rich or poor. Nothing is more fatal to health than an overcare of it. Doctor, feel my purse. - Jane Ace The sorrow which has no vent in tears may make other organs weep. There is some reason to believe there is greater safety in this branch of medicine from modest, unassuming ignorance, than from a meddling presumption which frequently accompanies a little learning. A person seldom falls sick but the bystanders are animated with a faint hope that he will die. In my youth, once, when I had a really exquisite toothache, I suddenly realized that my tooth had temporarily become the centre of the universe, that its outcries were more important than anything else, and that I would do absolutely anything to placate it. And as one gets older and starts worrying about cancer, one becomes more and more conscious of the fragility of the whole body, and with that consciousness comes a new and degrading kind of fear. It is degrading because it strengthens the desire to survive on any terms, and the desire to survive on any terms is the most base of all our instincts. If a man thinks about his physical or moral state, he usually discovers that he is ill. - Goethe I reckon being ill is one of the greatest pleasures of life, provided one is not too ill and is not obliged to work till one is better. We are usually the best men when in the worst health. Some of the papers presented at today's medical meeting tell us what we already know, but in a much more complicated manner. A human being who is first of all an invalid is all body; therein lies his inhumanity and his debasement. Invalids live longest. A vigorous five-mile walk will do more good for an unhappy but otherwise healthy adult than all the medicine and psychology in the world. We firmly believe that therapy is education rather than healing; that it is growth rather than treatment. Ask many of us who are disabled what we would like in life and you would be surprised how few would say, 'Not to be disabled.' We accept our limitations. What is dangerous about tranquillizers is that whatever peace of mind they bring is packaged peace of mind. Where you buy a pill and buy peace with it, you get conditioned to cheap solutions instead of deep ones. The tongue ever turns to the aching tooth. - Proverbs So long as the body is affected through the mind, no audacious device, even of the most manifestly dishonest character, can fail of producing occasional good to those who yield to it an implicit or even a partial faith. Tranquillizers do not change our environment, nor do they change our personalities. They merely reduce our responsiveness to stimuli. They dull the keen edge of the angers, fears, or anxiety with which we might otherwise react to the problems of living. Once the response has been dulled, the irritating surface noise of living muted or eliminated, the spark and brilliance are also gone. I am in a moment of pretty wellness. Health is the thing that makes you feel that now is the best time of the year. When you hear hoofbeats, think of horses before zebras. The American Medical Association operating from a platform of negative vigilance presents no solutions but busily fights each change and then loudly supports it against the next proposal. When we are sick our virtues and our vices are in abeyance. Most things get better by themselves. Most things, in fact, are better by morning. In medicine, sins of commission are mortal, sins of omission venial. It is the duty of a doctor to prolong life and it is not his duty to prolong the act of dying. I came, I saw, I concurred. Disease often tells its secrets in a casual parenthesis. 
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