Physician Quotes

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.

~ Paracelsus

THE MAXIMS OF MEDICINE Before you examine the body of a patient,Be patient to learn his story.For once you learn his story,You will also come to knowHis body.Before you diagnose any sickness,Make sure there is no sickness in the mind or heart.For the emotions in a man’s moon or sun,Can point to the sickness inAny one of his other parts.Before you treat a man with a condition,Know that not all cures can heal all people.For the chemistry that works on one patient,May not work for the next,Because even medicine has its ownConditions.Before asserting a prognosis on any patient,Always be objective and never subjective.For telling a man that he will win the treasure of life,But then later discovering that he will lose,Will harm him more than by telling himThat he may lose,But then he wins.THE MAXIMS OF MEDICINE by Suzy Kassem

~ Suzy Kassem

Love is a chemical reaction,But it cannot be fully understood or defined by science.And though a body cannot exist without a soul,It too cannot be fully understood or defined by science.Love is the most powerful form of energy,But science cannot decipher its elements.Yet the best cure for a sick soul is love,But even the most advanced physicianCannot prescribe it as medicine.INCOMPLETE SCIENCE by Suzy Kassem

~ Suzy Kassem

The physician must be able to tell the antecedents, know the present, and foretell the future — must mediate these things, and have two special objects in view with regard to disease, namely, to do good or to do no harm.

~ Hippocrates

Time and time again, throughout the history of medical practice, what was once considered as scientific eventually becomes regarded as bad practice.

~ David Stewart

Love is a chemical reaction, but it cannot be fully understood or defined by science. And though a body cannot exist without a soul, it too cannot be fully understood or defined by science.Love is the most powerful form of energy, but science cannot decipher its elements. Yet the best cure for a sick soul is love, but even the most advanced physician cannot prescribe it as medicine.

~ Suzy Kassem

Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why so great a portion of mankind, after nature has long since discharged them from external direction (naturaliter maiorennes), nevertheless remains under lifelong tutelage, and why it is so easy for others to set themselves up as their guardians. It is so easy not to be of age. If I have a book which understands for me, a pastor who has a conscience for me, a physician who decides my diet, and so forth, I need not trouble myself. I need not think, if I can only pay - others will easily undertake the irksome work for me.That the step to competence is held to be very dangerous by the far greater portion of mankind...

~ Immanuel Kant

Do not work primarily for money; do your duty to patients first and let the money follow; our life is short, we don't live twice; the whirlwind will pick up the leaves and spin them, but then it will drop them and they will form a pile.

~ John Hersey

A medical man likes to make psychological observations, and sometimes in the pursuit of such studies is too easily tempted into momentous prophecy which life and death easily set at nought.

~ George Eliot

I have heard Silvius, an excellent physician of Paris, say that lest the digestive faculties of the stomach should grow idle, it were not amiss once a month to rouse them by this excess, and to spur them lest they should grow dull and rusty; and one author tells us that the Persians used to consult about their mostimportant affairs after being well warmed with wine.

~ Michel De Montaigne

Jesus Christ, the holy Saviour is the Great Physician of Souls.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Unhealthy behavior is actually common among doctors, who tend to know a lot about medicine but very little about health.

~ Sol Luckman

Distraction leaches the authenticity out of our communications. When we are not emotionally present, we are gliding over the surface of our interactions and we never tangle in the depths where the nuances of our skills are tested and refined. A medical professor describes the easy familiarity with which her digital-native resident students master medical electronic records—but is troubled by the fact that they enter data with their eyes focused on their digital devices, not on the patient in the room with them. Preoccupation with technology acts as a screen between the student and the patient’s real emotion, real fear, and real concern. It may also prevent these residents from noticing physical symptoms that the patient fails to mention. The easy busyness of medical record entry is a way to sidestep the more challenging dynamics of human connection. But experienced physicians know that interpersonal skills are essential to mastering the art and science of medical diagnosis.

~ Marian Deegan

Feeling sick, sad? Call on the Great Physician. You don't need an appointment; He will see you right away!

~ Evinda Lepins

Love is a chemical reaction, but it cannot be fully understood or defined by science. And though a body cannot exist without a soul, it too cannot be fully understood or defined by science. Love is the most powerful form of energy, but science cannot decipher its elements. Yet the best cure for a sick soul is love, but even the most advanced physician cannot prescribe it as medicine.

~ Suzy Kassem

Burnout is a war that must be won on two fronts.

~ Jeanine Joy

We may indeed be justly proud of our apostolic succesion. THESE ARE OUR METHODS - to carefully observe the phenomena of life in all its stages , to cultivate reasoning faculty so as to be able to know the true from the false. THIS IS OUR WORK - to prevent disease, to relieve suffering and to heal the sick.

~ William Osler

I was temperamentally better suited to a cognitive discipline, to an introspective field—internal medicine, or perhaps psychiatry. The sight of the operating theater made me sweat. The idea of holding a scalpel caused coils to form in my belly. (It still does.) Surgery was the most difficult thing I could imagine.And so I became a surgeon.

~ Abraham Verghese

Such is the demographic paradox of a junior physician's relationship with his patients: I worry about how to extend their lives. This anxiety inevitably shortens my own.

~ Jacob M. Appel

He is the best physician who is the most ingenious inspirer of hope.

~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The glimpses of human strength and frailty that a physician sees are with me still.

~ Daniel Nathans

I learned very early that our health is always impaired by some excess either of food or abstinence, and I never had any physician except myself.

~ Giacomo Casanova

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

~ William Osler

The power of community to create health is far greater than any physician, clinic or hospital.

~ Mark Hyman

A physician without a knowledge of Astrology has no right to call himself a physician.

~ Hippocrates

They that are intoxicated by self-conceit have interposed themselves between it and the Divine and infallible Physician. Witness how they have entangled all men, themselves included, in the mesh of their devices. They can neither discover the cause of the disease, nor have they any knowledge of the remedy.

~ Bahá'u'lláh

The physician's highest calling, his only calling, is to make sick people healthy - to heal, as it is termed.

~ Samuel Hahnemann

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

~ Ambrose Bierce

A physician's physiology has much the same relation to his power of healing as a cleric's divinity has to his power of influencing conduct.

~ Samuel Butler

There is an enormous amount of options that a physician can provide today, right down from curing patients, treating patients, or providing patients with psychic solace or pain relief. So, in fact, the gamut of medical intervention is enormous.

~ Siddhartha Mukherjee

I trained initially as a physical chemist, and then, after becoming interested in biology, I went to medical school and learned how to be a physician. So, I'm a physician scientist.

~ Francis Collins

I studied at the Hebrew University Medical Faculty, graduated, and was an Israel Defense Forces' combat physician on a Navy ship.

~ Aaron Ciechanover

I am a medical scientist, not a practical physician.

~ Robert Jarvik

I had an interest in health policy and a realization that, as an academic physician, one of the things you're always looking to do is to have your clinical interests and your scholarly interests overlap and reinforce one another.

~ Risa Lavizzo-Mourey

The bottom line: health care reform is about the patient, not about the physician.

~ Abraham Verghese

As a physician specializing in nutrition, my priority is to the health of the public.

~ Michael Greger

The physician can bury his mistakes, but the architect can only advise his client to plant vines - so they should go as far as possible from home to build their first buildings.

~ Frank Lloyd Wright

Deceive not thy physician, confessor, nor lawyer.

~ George Herbert

From your confessor, lawyer and physician, hide not your case on no condition.

~ John Harington