18th-century Physician Quotes

Carl Linnaeus

Edward Jenner

Erasmus Darwin

Samuel Hahnemann

James Hutton

René Laennec

Benjamin Rush

Where silly quacks are most respected, there honest doctors are neglected. Petty Attorneys and Quack Doctors are like Wolves and scabbed Sheep among the Flock. One devours and the other breeds the rot.

Tobacco is a filthy weed,
That from the devil does proceed;
It drains your purse, it burns your clothes,
And makes a chimney of your nose.

Benjamin Waterhouse

No man can understand a subject of which he does not carry a distinct outline in his mind.

The more a man follows nature, and is obedient to her laws, the longer he will live; the farther he deviates from these, the shorter will be his existence.

Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland

In the progress of an art, from its rudest to its more perfect state, the whole process depends upon experiment. Science is in fact nothing more than the refinement of common sense making use of facts already known to acquire new facts.

John Davy (chemist)

The relations in which a physician stands to his patients, to his brethren, and to the public, are complicated, and multifarious; involving much knowledge of human nature, and extensive moral duties.

Thomas Percival

Physicians, like other people, must live by their employment.

William Buchan (physician)

Plutarch says that the life of a Vestal virgin was divided into three portions; in the first of which she learned the duties of her profession, in the second she practiced them, and in the third she taught them to others. This is no bad model for the life of a physician.

William Heberden

No man [can] become a nice, discriminating, and eminent botanist, without possessing that acumen in perception in proportion, colour, harmony of design, and obscure differences in the objects of the vegetable world, which alone belong to the eye of the painter.

Benjamin Smith Barton

For, as the substance of the brain, like that of the other solids of our body, is nearly incompressible, the quantity of blood within the head must be the same, or very nearly the same, at all times, whether in health or disease, in life or after death.

Alexander Monro (secundus)

The Art of Healing would seem to be of all Arts the most honourable, even tho' no better Reason could be given for it, than that it is the most difficult.

The death of medical men is an occurrence which eminently demands our attention, for it speaks to us of our science, and of ourselves. It reminds us, that we, in turn, are to become victims of the incompetency of our own art.

I present the reader with a new sign, which I have discovered for detecting diseases of the chest, This consists in the percussion of the human thorax, whereby according to the character of the particular sounds thence elicited, an opinion is formed of the internal state of that cavity.

Leopold Auenbrugger

To discover order and intelligence in scenes of apparent wildness and confusion, is the pleasing task of the geological enquirer...

John Ayrton Paris

Let us not be attached to systems, but to truth; and when Nature speaks, let us listen to her voice in preference to that of a Stahl or a Lavoissier, a Descartes or a Newton. Whatever may be the result of our experiments, we shall profit by them: as we run the risqué of losing nothing but error, let us hasten to subject ourselves to that loss.

Christopher Girtanner

I had not imagined it would be necessary to give a name to such a simple device, but others thought differently. If one wants to give it a name, the most suitable would be "stethoscope."

Those expressions are omitted which cannot with propriety be read aloud in the family.

Our country is in danger, but not to be despaired of. Our enemies are numerous and powerful; but we have many friends, determining to be free, and heaven and earth will aid the resolution. On you depend the fortunes of America. You are to decide the important question, on which rest the happiness and liberty of millions yet unborn. Act worthy of yourselves.

It behooves those who devote themselves to observation to be impressed by this truth (i.e., that many "facts" grow old) and to realize that the best work is only good in relation to its time and that it awaits another, more exact and more complete.

Pierre Charles Alexandre Louis

I've dispatc'd, my dear madam, this scrap of a letter, To say that Miss — — is very much better. A Regular Doctor no longer she lacks, And therefore I've sent her a couple of Quacks.

The stony rocks are not primeval, but daughters of Time.

It is the highest compliment to the ingenuity of a Pascal, a Leibnitz, and a Babbage, in their invention of the arithmetical machine, that there would not be required, in those who use it, more than the dexterity of a turnspit.

William Hamilton

Now cheaply bought for thrice their weight in gold.

I shall be better satisfied if the same can be said of me as was said of the prophet of old, "That I walked in the fear of the Lord, and begat sons and daughters" [Genesis 5:22], than if it were inscribed on my tombstone that I governed the councils or commanded the arms of the whole continent of America.

Books are the compasses and telescopes and sextants and charts which other men have prepared to help us navigate the dangerous seas of human life.

Jesse Lee Bennett