Medical Knowledge Quotes

• The ideal doctor would be a man endowed with profound knowledge of life and of the soul, intuitively divining any suffering or disorder of whatever kind, and restoring peace by his mere presence.

  Henri Frederic Amiel

  Health, Men, Doctors

  Journal Intime 22 August (1873)

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• From inability to let well alone; from too much zeal for the new and contempt for what is old; from putting knowledge before wisdom, science before art and cleverness before common sense; from treating patients as cases; and from making the cure of the disease more grievous than the endurance of the same, Good Lord, deliver us.

  Sir Robert Hutchison, 1st Baronet

  Wisdom, Art, Prayer

  British Medical Journal 1: 671 (1953)

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• The theory of medicine, therefore, presents what is useful in thought, but does not indicate how it is to be applied in practice-the mode of operation of these principles. The theory, when mastered, gives us a certain kind of knowledge. Thus we say, for example, there are three forms of fevers and nine constitutions. The practice of medicine is not the work which the physician carries out, but is that branch of medical knowledge which, when acquired, enables one to form an opinion upon which to base the proper plan of treatment.

  Avicenna

  Science, Medicine, Practice

  Avicenna (1999). “The Canon of Medicine (al-Qānūn Fī'l-ṭibb)”, Abjad Book Designers & Builders

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• Large swaths of what we now regard as basic medical knowledge came originally from naturalists.

  Richard Conniff

  Nature, Naturalist, Regard

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• The fact that the patients were complex human beings with a rich life beyond the hospital never really sank into the consciousness of the residents. Because they had no rich lives beyond the hospital, they assumed no one else did, either. In the end, what they lacked was not medical knowledge but ordinary life experience.

  Michael Crichton

  Rich Life, Facts, Ordinary

  Michael Crichton (2012). “Travels”, p.108, Vintage

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• Medical knowledge and technical savvy are biodegradable. The sort of medicine that was practiced in Boston or New York or Atlanta fifty years ago would be as strange to a medical student or intern today as the ceremonial dance of a !Kung San tribe would seem to a rock festival audience in Hackensack.

  Lewis Thomas

  Inspirational, Dance, New York

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• I’ve been doing this a long time, and I’ve come to learn that predictions don’t mean much. Too much lies outside the realm of medical knowledge. A lot of what happens next comes down to you and your specific genetics, your attitude. No, there’s nothing we can do to stop the inevitable, but that’s not the point. The point is that you should try to make the most of the time you have left.

  Nicholas Sparks

  Attitude, Lying, Mean

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