Disease Quotes - Page 4

• We cannot idealize technology. Technology is only and always the reflection of our own imagination, and its uses must be conditioned by our own values. Technology can help cure diseases, but we can prevent a lot of diseases by old-fashioned changes in behavior.

  William J. Clinton

  Science, Reflection, Technology

  Clinton, William J. (1997). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton, 1995”, p.1803, Best Books on

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• This is all very fine, but it won't do-Anatomy-botany-Nonsense! Sir, I know an old woman in Covent Garden, who understands botany better, and as for anatomy, my butcher can dissect a joint full as well; no, young man, all that is stuff; you must go to the bedside, it is there alone you can learn disease!
  Comment to Hans Sloane on Robert Boyle's letter of introduction describing Sloane as a 'ripe scholar, a good botanist, a skilful anatomist'.

  Thomas Sydenham

  Science, Men, Garden

  10 Copy quote

• To demonstrate experimentally that a microscopic organism actually is the cause of a disease and the agent of contagion, I know no other way, in the present state of Science, than to subject the microbe (the new and happy term introduced by M. Sédillot) to the method of cultivation out of the body.

  Louis Pasteur

  Knowledge, Science, Agents

  Hippocrates, Ambroise Paré, William Harvey, Edward Jenner, Oliver Wendell Holmes (1910). “Scientific Papers; Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology”

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• Science affects the average man and woman in two ways already. He or she benefits by its application driving a motor-car or omnibus instead of a horse-drawn vehicle, being treated for disease by a doctor or surgeon rather than a witch, and being killed with an automatic pistol or shell in place of a dagger or a battle-axe.

  John B. S. Haldane

  Horse, Science, Men

  7 Copy quote

• The air of caricature never fails to show itself in the products of reason applied relentlessly and without correction. The observation of clinical facts would seem to be a pursuit of the physician as harmless as it is indispensable. [But] it seemed irresistibly rational to certain minds that diseases should be as fully classifiable as are beetles and butterflies. This doctrine ... bore perhaps its richest fruit in the hands of Boissier de Sauvauges. In his Nosologia Methodica published in 1768 ... this Linnaeus of the bedside grouped diseases into ten classes, 295 genera, and 2400 species.

  Wilfred Trotter

  Butterfly, Air, Hands

  7 Copy quote

• Dissections daily convince us of our ignorance of the seats of diseases, and cause us to blush at our prescriptions. How often are we disappointed in our expectation from the most certain and powerful of our remedies, by the negligence or obstinacy of our patients! What mischief have we done under the belief of false facts and false theories! We have assisted in multiplying diseases. We have done more — we have increased their mortality.

  Benjamin Rush

  Truth, Ignorance, Convince Us

  "Medical Inquiries and Observations".

  24 Copy quote

  Show source

• Herrmann Pidoux and Armand Trousseau stated 'Disease exists within us, because of us, and through us', Pasteur did not entirely disagree, 'This is true for certain diseases', he wrote cautiously, only to add immediately: 'I do not think that it is true for all of them'.

  Louis Pasteur

  Truth, Science, Thinking

  7 Copy quote

• Only by following out the injunction of our great predecessor [William Harvey] to search out and study the secrets of Nature by way of experiment, can we hope to attain to a comprehension of 'the wisdom of the body and the understanding of the heart,' and thereby to the mastery of disease and pain, which will enable us to relieve the burden of mankind.

  Ernest Starling

  Nature, Pain, Heart

  9 Copy quote

• While the nature of Texas fever is by no means made clear as yet, we are able to affirm that ticks can produce it. Whether the disease can be transmitted by any other agency must be decided by future investigations. Meanwhile the evidence accumulated thus far seems to favor very strongly the dictum: No ticks, no Texas fever.

  Theobald Smith

  Nature, Mean, Science

  7 Copy quote

• It is my belief that the basic knowledge that we're providing to the world will have a profound impact on the human condition and the treatments for disease and our view of our place on the biological continuum.

  Craig Venter

  Knowledge, Science, Impact

  "Genome announcement a milestone, but only a beginning". www.cnn.com. June 26, 2000.

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• The advances of biology during the past 20 years have been breathtaking, particularly in cracking the mystery of heredity. Nevertheless, the greatest and most difficult problems still lie ahead. The discoveries of the 1970's about the chemical roots of memory in nerve cells or the basis of learning, about the complex behavior of man and animals, the nature of growth, development, disease and aging will be at least as fundamental and spectacular as those of the recent past.

  H. Bentley Glass

  Memories, Lying, Learning

  7 Copy quote

• If diphtheria is a disease caused by a microorganism, it is essential that three postulates be fulfilled. The fulfilment of these postulates is necessary in order to demonstrate strictly the parasitic nature of a disease:
  1) The organism must be shown to be constantly present in characteristic form and arrangement in the diseased tissue.
  2) The organism which, from its behaviour appears to be responsible for the disease, must be isolated and grown in pure culture.
  3) The pure culture must be shown to induce the disease experimentally.
  An early statement of Koch's postulates.

  Friedrich Loeffler

  Science, Order, Behaviour

  23 Copy quote

• 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

  Nature, Science, Two

  7 Copy quote

• Statistics has been the handmaid of science, and has poured a flood of light upon the dark questions of famine and pestilence, ignorance and crime, disease and death.

  James A. Garfield

  Ignorance, Dark, Light

  Garfield, James A. (1882). “The works of James Abram Garfield. (2 Volumes) Volume 1”, p.453, Best Books on

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• ... semantics ... is a sober and modest discipline which has no pretensions of being a universal patent-medicine for all the ills and diseases of mankind, whether imaginary or real. You will not find in semantics any remedy for decayed teeth or illusions of grandeur or class conflict. Nor is semantics a device for establishing that everyone except the speaker and his friends is speaking nonsense

  Alfred Tarski

  Real, Illusions Of Grandeur, Class

  17 Copy quote

• As agonizing a disease as cancer is, I do not think it can be said that our civilization is threatened by it. ... But a very plausible case can be made that our civilization is fundamentally threatened by the lack of adequate fertility control. Exponential increases of population will dominate any arithmetic increases, even those brought about by heroic technological initiatives, in the availability of food and resources, as Malthus long ago realized.

  Carl Sagan

  Cancer, Science, Thinking

  10 Copy quote

• There are some arts which to those that possess them are painful, but to those that use them are helpful, a common good to laymen, but to those that practise them grievous. Of such arts there is one which the Greeks call medicine. For the medical man sees terrible sights, touches unpleasant things, and the misfortunes of others bring a harvest of sorrows that are peculiarly his; but the sick by means of the art rid themselves of the worst of evils, disease, suffering, pain and death.

  Hippocrates

  Art, Pain, Mean

  Hippocrates, Paul Potter (1984). “Hippocrates”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Cancer is a disease where the patient can contribute a great deal of help himself if he or she can retain their morale and their hopes.

  George Carman

  Cancer, Helping, Patient

  9 Copy quote

• Hungry Joe collected lists of fatal diseases and arranged them in alphabetical order so that he could put his finger without delay on any one he wanted to worry about.

  Joseph Heller

  Order, Worry, Delay

  1961 Catch-22, ch.17.

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Stem cells have the potential to be used to treat and better understand some of the world's most deadly and disabling diseases.

  Mark Udall

  Cells, World, Reincarnation

  7 Copy quote

• Although approximately 80% of osteoporosis sufferers are women, as the longevity of the male population increases, the disease will assume increasing importance in men

  Gro Harlem Brundtland

  Men, Osteoporosis, Males

  65 Copy quote

• Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of death in women

  Gro Harlem Brundtland

  Causes, Wellness, Cardiovascular

  7 Copy quote

• Plant diseases, drought, desolation, despair were recurrent catastrophes during the ages - and the ancient remedies: supplications to supernatural spirits or gods.

  Norman Borlaug

  Despair, Age, Spirit

  15 Copy quote

• America's most dangerous diseases have developed an immunity to politics. We suffer not from a failure of political organization or power, but a failure of love.

  Cal Thomas

  Organization, America, Political

  Cal Thomas, Wayne Stayskal (2001). “The Wit & Wisdom of Cal Thomas”

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• God is an immensity, while this disease, this death, which is in me, this small, tightly defined pedestrian event, is merely and perfectly real, without miracle—or instruction.

  Harold Brodkey

  Real, Miracle, Events

  16 Copy quote