Physician Quotes

Ceremony and ritual spring from our heart of hearts: those who govern us know it well, for they would sooner deny us bread than dare alter the observance of tradition.

F. Gonzalez-Crussi

Love and intimacy are at the root of what makes us sick and what makes us well...I am not aware of any other factor in medicine-not diet, not smoking, not exercise-that has a greater impact.

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.

[Compared to cow's milk] soy milk is only deficient in blood pus, antibiotics, artery-clogging fat, and cholesterol.

To please men and to kill parasites are the only uses tobacco-its ultimate effects are the same in both cases.

John Harvey Kellogg

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.

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.

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

It takes four angels to oversee an apocalypse: a recorder to make the book that would be scripture in the new world; a preserver to comfort and save those selected to be the first generation; an accuser to remind them why they suffer; and a destroyer to revoke the promise of survival and redemption, and to teach them the awful truth about furious sheltering grace.

She felt the familiar calmness of an emergency, but she understood the falseness of that feeling, now that it was her life at stake.

Abraham Verghese

As well as being one of the worst things that can happen to a human being, schizophrenia can also be one of the richest learning and humanizing experiences life offers.

Anything you adopt temporarily only begets temporary results, and fluctuating your weight up and down is not lifespan favorable.

What thoughts are so important that it is worth holding on to them even when they make you miserable? Why are you holding on? You are in charge of your thoughts and feelings. If you are willing to search for the reason that you can't let go of disturbing thoughts, you can learn about yourself and restore your own peace of mind.

Bernie S. Siegel

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

Rebecca Lee Crumpler

Every art and science has a language of technical terms peculiar to itself. With those terms every student must make himself familiarly acquainted at the outset; and, first of all, he will desire to know the names of the objects about which he is to be engaged.

Augustus Addison Gould

A lot of the appeal of internal medicine is Sherlockian—solving the case from the clues. We are detectives; we revel in the process of figuring it all out. It's what doctors most love to do.

Bread is a staple article of diet in theory, rather than in practice. There are few who are truly fond of bread in its simplest, most pure, and most healthful state.... Is there one person in a thousand who would truly enjoy a meal of simple bread of two days old?

There is no longer serious doubt in my mind that human life exists from the very onset of pregnancy.

Bernard Nathanson

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)

Science by itself has no moral dimension. But it does seek to establish truth. And upon this truth morality can be built.

William Masters

I have always believed that the Good Samaritan went across the road to the wounded man just because he wanted to.

Wilfred Grenfell

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

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

The pineal gland of evolutionarily older animals, such as lizards and amphibians, is also called the 'third' eye. Just like the two seeing eyes, the third eye possesses a lens, cornea, and retina. It is light-sensitive and helps regulate body temperature and skin coloration-two basic survival functions related to environmental light.

When a doctor arrives to attend some patient of the working class, he ought not to feel his pulse the moment he enters, as is nearly always done without regard to the circumstances of the man who lies sick; he should not remain standing while he considers what he ought to do, as though the fate of a human being were a mere trifle; rather let him condescend to sit down for awhile.

Bernardino Ramazzini