18th-century Physician Quotes

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.

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

Samuel Hahnemann

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.

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.

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.

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

Théodore Tronchin

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

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.

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

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

William Beaumont

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

William Drennan