18th-century Physician Quotes

Carl Linnaeus

Edward Jenner

Erasmus Darwin

Samuel Hahnemann

James Hutton

René Laennec

Benjamin Rush

Speak, ye, the pure delight, whose favour'd steps The lamp of science, through the jealous maze Of nature guides, when haply you reveal Her secret honours.

Tis reason's part
To govern and to guard the heart,
To lull the wayward soul to rest,
When hopes and fears distract the breast;
Reason may calm this doubtful strife,
And steer thy bark through various life.

Nathaniel Cotton

There are some modern practitioners, who declaim against medical theory in general, not considering that to think is to theorize; and that no one can direct a method of cure to a person labouring under disease, without thinking, that is, without theorizing; and happy therefore is the patient, whose physician possesses the best theory.

Now cheaply bought for thrice their weight in gold.

It is in vain to attempt to measure a quantity which escapes our notice, and which history cannot ascertain; and we might just as well attempt to measure the distance of the stars without a parallax, as to calculate the destruction of the solid land without a measure corresponding to the whole.

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

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.

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.

Nor one feeling of vengeance presume to defile
The cause, or the men, of the Emerald Isle.

William Drennan

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

Some physiologists will have it that the stomach is a mill;—others, that it is a fermenting vat;—others again that it is a stew-pan;—but in my view of the matter, it is neither a mill, a fermenting vat, nor a stew-pan—but a stomach, gentlemen, a stomach.

But since the brain, as well as the cerebellum, is composed of many parts, variously figured, it is possible, that nature, which never works in vain, has destined those parts to various uses, so that the various faculties of the mind seem to require different portions of the cerebrum and cerebellum for their production.

Georg Prochaska

And it has been sarcastically said, that there is a wide difference between a good physician and a bad one, but a small difference between a good physician and no physician at all; by which it is meant to insinuate, that the mischievous officiousness of art does commonly more than counterbalance any benefit derivable from it.

Facts are more persuasive than arguments, however ingeniously made, and by their eloquence...

William Beaumont

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

In medicine, sins of commission are mortal, sins of omission venial.

Théodore Tronchin

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

There must be some limit to the thing. It cannot go on to infinity.

Samuel Hahnemann

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)

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.

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

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

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

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)