19th-century Physician Quotes

But we are learning from the teaching and example of Jesus that life itself is a religion, that nothing is more sacred than a human being, that the end of all right institutions, whether the home or the church or an educational establishment, or a government, is the development of the human soul.

Anna Howard Shaw

A dog gladly admits the superiority of his master over himself, accepts his judgment as final, but, contrary to what dog-lovers believe, he does not consider himself as a slave. His submission is voluntary, and he expects his own small rights to be respected.

Medicine, as we are practising it, is a luxury trade. We are selling bread at the price of jewels... Let us take the profit, the private economic profit, out of medicine, and purify our profession of rapacious individualism... Let us say to the people not 'How much have you got?' but 'How best can we serve you?

The man who is convinced that there is something to be gained, will always gain something; and in the most beaten paths something new can always be found, provided it be sought for with ardour and intelligence.

Armand Trousseau

Five hundred years before Christ some physicians of ancient India, working under the influence of the Lord Buddha, advanced the art of healing to so perfect a state that they were able to abolish surgery, although the surgery of their time was as efficient, or more so, than that of the present day.

Thus, upon the foundations laid by previous investigators, do medical art and science build a structure which will in its turn be the foundation of future knowledge.

The rights of no oppressed people have ever yet been obtained by a voluntary act of justice on the part of the oppressors.

The grave, where sets the orb of being, sets
To rise, ascend, and culminate above
Eternity's horizon evermore.

Man feels and ponders death as though it were the end, when in fact death is merely the continuation of life. It is another life. You may not believe in the existence of the soul, yet you must acknowledge that your body will live on as green grass, as a cloud. For you are, after all, water and dust.

Government is nothing but the regulated injustice that every rascal has in his heart.

A physician is obligated to consider more than a diseased organ, more even than the whole man — he must view the man in his world.

When the patient dies the kidneys may go to the pathologist, but while he lives the urine is ours. It can provide us day by day, month by month, and year by year, with a serial story of the major events going on within the kidney.

The use of thesis-writing is to train the mind, or to prove that the mind has been trained; the former purpose is, I trust, promoted, the evidences of the latter are scanty and occasional.

Clifford Allbutt

Before one can become a magician he must learn to control his own mind; for mind is the substance with which the magician acts, and the power to control it is the beginning of magic.

The Negroes have little invention, but strong powers of imitation, so that they readily acquire mechanic arts. They have a great talent for music, and all their external senses are remarkably acute.

Samuel George Morton

There is a vast difference between treating effects and adjusting the cause.

Daniel David Palmer

Lest when I am gone you may be at a loss for an epitaph for me, let me give you one - He Fed Fevers.

Robert James Graves

Bacteria and parasites cannot cause disease processes unless they find their own peculiar morbid soil in which to grow and multiply.

Never must the physician say, the disease is incurable. By that admission he denies God, our Creator; he doubts Nature with her profuseness of hidden powers and mysteries.

Morris Fishbein

These great improvements of modern times are blessings or curses on us, just in the same ratio as the mental, moral, and religious rule over the animal; or the animal propensities of our nature predominate over the intellectual and moral. The spider elaborates poison from the same flower, in which the bee finds materials out of which she manufactures honey.

Harriot Kezia Hunt

The rain was dashing in torrents against the window-panes, and the wind sweeping in heavy and fitful gusts along the dreary and deserted streets, as a party of three persons sat over their wine, in that stately old pile which once formed the resort of the Irish Members, in College Green, Dublin, and went by the name of Daly's Clubhouse.

Men, accustomed to think of men as possessing sex attributes and other things besides, are accustomed to think of women as having sex, and nothing else.

Mary Corinna Putnam Jacobi

Selfish prudence is too often allowed to come between duty and human life.

Rebecca Lee Crumpler

It is obvious to any student of anemia that a beginning has been made, but our knowledge of pigment metabolism and hemoglobin regeneration is inadequate in every respect. This is a stimulating outlook for the numerous investigators in this field and we may confidently expect much progress in the near future.

Matter is the miracle of miracles, the most mystical of all things mystical.

Ronald Campbell Macfie