British Physician Quotes

Joseph Lister

Havelock Ellis

James Hudson Taylor

Clifford Allbutt

Edward Bach

Benjamin Ward Richardson

Samuel Garth

Bearing in mind that it is from the vitality of the atmospheric particles that all the mischief arises, it appears that all that is requisite is to dress the wound with some material capable of killing these septic germs, provided that any substance can be found reliable for this purpose, yet not too potent as a caustic.

Physiology owes more to medicine than medicine to physiology. Nature in disease performs vivisections for us. The greater and better part of what we know concerning the functions of the many organs of the body is derived from pathological observation and not from physiological experiment.

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

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)

There are many good general practitioners, there is only one good universal practitioner — "a warm bed."

Animals who die for your dinner table die alone, in terror, in sadness and in pain. The killing is merciless and inhumane. … Animals suffer from pain and fear just as much as you do. Most spend their last hours locked in a truck, packed into a cage with hundreds of other terrified animals and then cruelly pushed into a blood soaked death chamber. Animals which are a year old are often far more rational – and capable of logical thought – than six-week-old babies. Pigs and sheep are far more intelligent than small children.

In all sciences, Nomenclature is an object of importance; and each term should convey to the student a definite meaning.

Robley Dunglison

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.

A coroner must be humane, fair and fearless in obtaining the truth. That is why I have put my head above the parapet.

Montague Levine

The modern haematologist, instead of describing in English what he can see, prefers to describe in Greek what he can't.

The unprecedented development of science and technology...so rapid that it is said that 90 per cent of the scientists which this country has ever produced are still living today.

Preserve and treat food as you would your body, remembering that in time food will be your body.

Benjamin Ward Richardson

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

Want of Care does us more Damage than want of Knowledge.

Thomas Fuller (writer)

Let us hope that in the interludes of rhetoric the logic of facts may find a moment to make itself heard. It will teach men... to hold of Nature that her ways are not as our ways, nor her thoughts as our thoughts.

George Rolleston

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

John Ayrton Paris

Cats, indeed, appear to regard human beings who may be domiciled with them rather as part of the furniture than as comrades.

The King's life is moving peacefully towards its close.

Bertrand Dawson, 1st Viscount Dawson of Penn

Now cheaply bought for thrice their weight in gold.

On being charged:

Murder... murder... Can you prove it was murder? [...] I didn't think you could prove it was murder. She was dying in any event.

John Bodkin Adams

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.

If mathematics were the only path of science.... Nature would have been illegible for Goethe..

Discoveries are made by the age, and not by the individual.

Let it be remembered that there are, in every discovery, two accidents; the accident of meeting with the fact connected with the discovery, and the accident of possessing an ingenious, and, in most cases, a great mind to take advantage of the fact.

It is as great a crime to leave a woman alone in her agony and deny her relief from her suffering as it is to insist upon dulling the consciousness of a natural mother who desires above all things to be aware of the final reward of her efforts, whose ambition is to be present, in full possession of her senses, when the infant she already adores greets her with its first loud cry and the soft touch of its restless body upon her limbs.

Grantly Dick-Read