ESSENCE
Hippocrates (B.C. 460-370) Greek Physician and “Father of Medicine”
AphorismsNatural forces within us are the true healers of disease.
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Galen (129-199? A.D) Greek Physician
The physician is Nature’s assistant.
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Aristotle Aristotle (B.C. 384-322) Greek Philosopher
The physician heals, Nature makes well.
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Voltaire (1694-1778) (Francois Marie Arouet) French Historian & Writer
The art of medicine consists of amusing the patient whilenature cures the disease.
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Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) American Statesman, Scientist and Philosopher
God heals, and the doctor takes the fee.
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William Broome (1689-1745)English Scholar and Poet
A doctor is a man who writes prescriptions till the patienteither dies or is cured by nature.
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Petronius Arbiter (d. 66 A.D.)Roman Writer
Satyricon XLIIA doctor is nothing more than a mental consolation.
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Gilles Menage (1613-1692) age (1613-1692) French Scholar, Lawyer and Cleric Menagiana
Medicine may be defined as the art or the science of keeping a patient quiet with frivolous reasons for his illness and amusing him with remedies good or bad until nature kills him or cures him.
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Paracelsus (1493-1541) (T. Bombastus Von Hohenheim) Swiss Philosopher
Die grosse WundarzneiMedicine is not only a science; it is also an art.It does not consist of compounding pills and plasters; it deals with the very processes of life, which must be understood beforethey may be guided.
OPPOSITES
Walt Whitman (1819-1892)American Poet and Writer
I love doctors and hate their medicine.
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SPublilius Syrus (fl. B.C. 42) Syrian Born – Roman Writer of Aphorisms
There are some remedies worse than the disease.
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Francis Quarles (1592-1644) English Poet
Hieroglyphics of the Life of ManPhysicians, of all men, are most happy:whatever good success they have, the world proclaimeth and what faults they commit, the earth covereth.
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Hippocrates (B.C. 460-370) Greek Physician and “Father of Medicine”
Physicians are many in title but very few in reality.
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Nicholas de Belleville (1753-1831)
If you have a lawsuit, and you get one bad lawyer, you lose your suit, but you can appeal;but if you have one bad doctor, and he kills you,then there can be no appeal.
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Jerome Tarshis Quoted in:Barnes & Noble Book of Quotations
The history of medicine is a story of amazing foolishnessand amazing intelligence.
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Ernest L. Wynder Quoted in:The Wit and Wisdom of the 20th Century
It should be the function of medicine to have people die young as late as possible.
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Anonymous
A doctor is the only man who can suffer from good health. OPPOSITES Finley Peter Dunne (1867-1936)American Humorist and Journalist
Mister Dooley SaysI wondher why ye can always read a doctor’s bill an’ yeniver can read his purscription.
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Sir Humphrey D. Rolleston: The Wit of Medicine
Medicine is a noble profession but a damn bad business.
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Anonymous
Medicine is a science, acquiring a practice an art.
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Samuel N. Behrman (1893-1973) American Playwright
Psychoanalysis makes quite simple people feel they’re complex.
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Karl Kraus (1874-1936)Austrian Satirist, Critic and Poet
Psychoanalysis is that mental illness for which it regards itself a therapy.
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Shannon Fife Quoted ineter’s Quotations, Ideas for Our Time
Psychiatry is the art of teaching people how to stand on their own feet while reclining on couches. Insight
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Chinese Proverb
The superior doctor prevents sickness; The mediocre doctor attends to impending sickness; The inferior doctor treats actual sickness.
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Robert Haven Schauffler (b. 1879) American Musician, Soldier and Poet
The ideal doctor is patient.
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James Howard Means (1885-1967) Daedalus, 1963
The custom of giving patients appointments weeks in advance, during which time their illness may become seriously aggravated, seems to me to fall short of the ideal doctor- patient relationship.
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English Proverb
Heaven defend me from a busy doctor.
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Anonymous
The person most often late for a doctor’s appointment is the doctor himself.
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Paul Reznikoff (b. 1896) Quoted in: Familiar Medical Quotations, by M. B. Strauss
A physician is judged by the three A’s, Ability, Availability and Affability. doctor makes $191,000.00, after expenses.The average full time worker in the U.S. earns $29,748.00.
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David Jones American DoctorQuoted in:New Yorker, 7/23/84
Doctors coin money when they do procedures [but] familymedicine doesn’t have any procedures.
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William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English Dramatist and Poet
By medicine life may be prolong’d, yet death Will seize the Doctor too.
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Galen (129-c.199 A.D)Greek Physician Of Protecting the Health
That physician will hardly be thought very careful of thehealth of others who neglects his own.
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George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) British Dramatist, Critic, Novelist and Wit: The Doctor’s Dilemma
The most tragic thing in the world is a sick doctor.
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Voltaire (1694-1778) (Francois Marie Arouet) French Historian & Writer
I know of nothing more laughable than a doctor who does not die of old age.
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George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) British Dramatist, Critic, Novelist and Wit: The Doctor’s Dilemma
Make it compulsory for a doctor using a brass plate to have inscribed on it, in addition to the letters indicating his qualifications, the words “Remember that I too am mortal.”
INSIGHT
Agatha Christie (1891-1975) English Writer
Endless NightDoctors can do almost anything nowadays, can’t they, unless they kill you while they’re trying to cure you.
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George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) British Dramatist, Critic, Novelist and Wit
A doctor’s reputation is made by the number of eminent men who have died under his care.
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Charles Lamb (1775-1834) English Essayist
English physicians kill you, the French let you die.
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Frank Lloyd Wright (1869-1959)American Architect
A doctor can bury his mistakes but an architect can only advise his client to plant vines.
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John of Salisbury (d. 1180) English Prelate and Scholar: Policraticus
The common people say, that physicians are the class of people who kill other men in the most polite and courteous manner.
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George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) British Dramatist, Critic, Novelist and Wit: The Doctor’s Dilemma
When men die of disease they are said to die from natural causes.When they recover (and mostly they do) the doctor gets the credit of curing them.
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Nicholas Chamfort (1741-1794) French Wit and Writer
The threat of a neglected cold is for doctors what the threat of purgatory is for priests – a gold mine.
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Marcel Proust (1871-1922) French Novelist
Illness is the most heeded of doctors:to goodness andwisdom we only make promises; pain we obey. he needs a physician who will support the patient’s strength and help him against the disease.
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Rhazes (850-923) (A. B. M. ibn Z. Razi) Persian Physician
When the disease is stronger than the patient, the physician will not be able to help him at all, and if the strength of the patient is greater than the strength of the disease, hedoes not need a physician at all. But when both are equal, 6 externals cooperate.
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Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898) Prussian Statesman and Chancellor
Physicians still retain something of their priestly origin;they would gladly do what they forbid.
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Franklin P. Adams (1881-1960) (F.P.A.) American Journalist and Humorist The Health Master, Ch. I
With the exception of lawyers, there is no profession whichconsiders itself above the law so widely as the medical profession.
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Philemon (B.C. 361-262) Greek Poet of New Comedy
Doctors order for their patients a strict regime; when they themselves are ill in bed they do everything that they have forbidden to others.
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Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930)British Physician and Writer
When a doctor does go wrong he is the first of criminals.He has nerve and he has knowledge.
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George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) British Dramatist, Critic, Novelist and Wit
Let no one suppose that the words doctor and patient can disguise from the parties the fact that they are employerand employee.
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William Cullen (b. 1920)American Entertainer
It is the manner of hypochondriacs to change often their physician . . . for a physician who does not admit the reality of the disease cannot be supposed to take much pains to cure it.
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Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) French Philosopher and Essayist Essays
Who ever saw a doctor use the prescription of his colleagues without cutting out or adding something?
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Anonymous
The mark of a true doctor is usually illegible.
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Marty Indik Quoted in:1,911 Best Things Anybody Ever Said, R. Byrne
Half of analysis is anal.
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Alexander Chase: Perspectives
Psychiatry’s chief contribution to philosophy is the discovery that the toilet is the seat of the soul.
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Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) Austrian Physician – Founder of Psychoanalysis: Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis
It might be said of psychoanalysis that if you give it your little finger, it will soon have your whole hand.
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Laurence J. Peter (b. 1919) Canadian-American Educator and Author
Psychiatry enables us to correct our faults by confessing to our parents’ shortcomings.
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Paul Valery (1871-1945) (Ambroise-Paul-T.-Jules) French Philosopher & Poet: Mauvaises pensees et autres
A man who is “of sound mind” is one who keeps the innermadman under lock and key.
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Robert Webb-Johnstone: Collected Papers
A neurotic is the man who builds a castle in the air.A psychotic is the man who lives in it.And a psychiatristis the man who collects the rent. is simply “an indisposed eccentric.”
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R. D. Laing (b. 1927) British Psychiatrist: The Guardian
Doctors in all ages have made fortunes by killing their patients by means of their cures.The difference in psychiatry is that is the death of the soul.
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Martin Henry Fischer (b. 1879)American Scientist, Author and Educator
The practice of medicine is a thinker’s art, the practice of surgery a plumber’s.
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Stanley O. Hoerr: American Journal of Surgery
The surgeon is a man of action.By temperament and by training he prefers to serve the sick by operating on them,and he inwardly commiserates with a patient so unfortunate as to have a disease not suited to surgical treatment.
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Surgeon:A man who’s always out for his cut.
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Astley Paston Cooper (1768-1841)English Surgeon: Lectures on Surgery
I have made many mistakes myself; in learning the anatomy of the eye I dare say, I have spoiled a hatful; the best surgeon, like the best general, is he who makes the fewest mistakes.
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William Stewart Halsted (1852-1922) American Surgeon: Bulletin of the Johns Hopkins Hospital, 1912
The only weapon with which the unconscious patient can immediately retaliate upon the incompetent surgeon ishemorrhage.
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Charles L. Dana (1852-1935)
All the real, solid, elemental jests against doctors wereuttered some one or two thousand years ago.
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Salvador de Madariaga y Rojo (1886-1978)Spanish Writer and Diplomat
There is no medicine; there are only medicine men. equal attention to the rich and the poor. Positive
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George Merck (1894-1957)
Medicine is for the patient. Medicine is for the people.It is not for the profits.
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Alexander Pope (1688-1744)English Poet, Critic and Translator
A wise physician, skilled our ills to heal,is more than armies to the public weal.
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Sir James Bryce (1838-1922) British Jurist, Historian and Diplomat
Medicine (is) the only profession that labours incessantly to destroy the reason for its own existence.
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Samuel Bartlett Parris (1806-1827) Quoted in: Familiar Medical Quotations, ed. M. Strauss
A richer pleasure, earth cannot afford Than when it is your lot, a friend to save From sinking down to his untimely grave.
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Voltaire (1694-1778) (Francois Marie Arouet) French Historian & Writer
A Philosophical DictionaryMen who are occupied in the restoration of health to other men, by the joint exertion of skill and humanity, are aboveall the great of the earth.They even partake of divinity,since to preserve and renew is almost as noble as to create.
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Sushruta (5th C.? B.C.) Quoted in: Familiar Medical Quotations, ed. M. Strauss
By doing good to humanity with his professional skill, a physician achieves glory, and acquires the plaudits of the good and the wise in this life, and shall live in Paradise in the next.
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Alexander Pope (1688-1744) English Poet, Critic and Translator
They (physicians) are in general the most amiable companions and the best friends, as well as the most learned men I know.
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William Osler (1849-1919) Canadian Physician and Professor: “Books and Men,” Aequanimitas, with Other Addresses
In the records of no other profession is there to be found so large a number of men who have combined intellectualpre-eminence with nobility of character.
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John Ruskin (1819-1900) English Critic and Social Theorist: The Crown of the Wild Olive
They [doctors], on the whole, desire to cure the sick; and – if they are good doctors and the choice were fairly put to them – would rather cure their patient and lose their fee, than kill him and get it.
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Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) American Statesman, Scientist and Philosopher
He’s the best physician that knows the worthlessness of most medicines.
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Ovid (B.C.43-18A.D.) (Publius Ovidius Naso) Latin Poet: Remedia amoris
Time is the best medicine.
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Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) English Statesman and Author: Henrietta Temple
Time is the great physician.
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Peter Latham Quoted in:Barnes & Noble Book of Quotations
Common sense is in medicine the master workman.
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Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894) American Author, Physician and Humorist
What I call a good patient is one who, having found a good physician, sticks to him till he dies.
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Will Rogers (1879-1935) American Humorist: The Autobiography of Will Rogers, 1949
The best doctor in the world is a veterinarian.He can’task his patients what is the matter – he’s got to just know.
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Lawrence Sterne (1713-1768) English Clergyman and Humorist: A Sentimental Journey
There are worse occupations in this world than feeling a woman’s pulse.
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Brahmanic Saying
In illness the physician is a father; in convalescence, afriend; when health is restored, he is a guardian.
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Gordon N Byron (1788-1824) English Poet
Physicians mend or end us; but though in health we sneer; when sick we call them to attend us, without the least propensity to jeer.
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Voltaire (1694-1778) (Francois Marie Arouet) French Historian & Writer
Doctors are men who prescribe medicinesof which they know little, to cure diseases of which they know less,in humans beings of whom they no nothing. NEGATVE
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Moliere (1622-1673) (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin) French Dramatist & Actor: Le Malade imaginaire
Nearly all men die of their medicines, and not of their illnesses.
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Vergil (B.C. 70-19) Vergil (B.C. 70-19) (Publius Virgilius Maro) Roman Epic Poet Aeneid
The medicine increases the disease.
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Martin Henry Fischer (b. 1879)American Scientist, Author and Educator
Half the modern drugs could well be thrown out the window, except that the birds might eat them.
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Marcel Proust (1871-1922) French Novelist
For every disease that doctors cure with medicine, theyproduce ten in healthy people by inoculating them with thatvirus which is a thousand times more powerful than any microbe:the idea that one is ill.
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Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)Welsh Poet: The Doctor and the Devils
When I take up assassination, I shall start with the surgeons in this city and work UP to the gutter.
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National Lampoon, 1975
Medicine:The Nation’s Number One Killer.
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Avicenna (980-1037) (Ibn Sina) Islamic Scientist and Philosopher
An ignorant doctor is the aide-de-camp of death.
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Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)French General and Emperor
Doctors will have more lives to answer for in the next world than even we generals.
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Gottfried W. Leibniz (1646-1716)German Philosopher and Mathematician (attributed)
I often say a great doctor kills more people than a great general.
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Matthew Prior (1664-1721) English Poet and Diplomat: The Remedy Worse than the Disease
Cured yesterday of my disease, I died last night of the physician.
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Reginald Fitz Quoted in:National Enquirer, 1993: BAD DOCTORS KILL OR MAIM 300,000 PATIENTS A YEAR
America’s state medical boards fail miserably when it comes to cracking down on incompetent doctors, a leading public interest group charges.
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Martial (A.D. 40?-102?)Roman Poet and Epigrammatist: Epigrams
Lately was Diaulus a doctor, now he is an undertaker. What the undertaker now does the doctor too did before.
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Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) French Philosopher and Essayist: “One Man’s Profit Is Another Man’s Harm,” Essays
No doctor takes pleasure in the health even of his friends.
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German Proverb
A young doctor means a new graveyard.
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Ben Jonson (1572-1637)English Playwright and Poet
Many funerals discredit a physician.
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English Proverb
While the doctors consult, the patient dies.
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Ecclesiasticus (B.C. 200?) Jewish – Apocrypha – Old Testament
He that sinneth before his Maker, let him fall into the hand of the physician.
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The Bible: Mark 5:25
And a certain woman…had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse.
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Eugene O’Neill (1888-1953) American Playwright: Long Day’s Journey Into Night
I hate doctors!They’ll do anything – anything to keep you coming to them.They’ll sell their souls!What’s worse,they’ll sell yours, and you never know it till one day you find yourself in hell!
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Alice James (1848-1892) (Mary Waterstreet) American Writer
I suppose one has a greater sense of intellectual degradation after an interview with a doctor thanfrom any human experience. needless, when my physician did or ought to have to knownbetter?
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Heraclitus (B.C. 535-475)Greek Philosopher
Physicians who cut, burn, stab, and rack the sick demand a fee for it which they do not deserve to get.
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John Mortimer: Observer (8/20/7
There is no human activity, eating, sleeping, drinking or sex which some doctor somewhere won’t discover leads directly to cardiac arrest.
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Francois de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680)French Classical Writer: Maxims
To safeguard one’s health at the cost of too strict a diet is a tiresome illness indeed.
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Carpis Linnaeus (1707-1778) (Carl von Linn‚ Swedish Botanist and Physician: Diaeta Naturalis (Introduction)
To live by medicine is to live horribly.
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Don Herold (b. 1889)American Humorous Writer and Artist
Doctors think a lot of patients are cured who have simply quit in disgust.
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Benjamin Rush (1745?-1813) American Physician and Educator: Autobiography
Medicine is an occupation for slaves.
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Sir William Osler (1849-1919) Canadian Physician and Professor
It is astonishing with how little reading a doctor can practice medicine, but it is not astonishing how badly he may do it.
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Johann W. von Goethe (1749-1832)German Poet and Novelist
Thus I saw that most men only care for science so far as they get a living by it, and that they worship even errorwhen it affords them a subsistence.
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It is almost impossible to find a doctor who is poor, even though there are many poor doctors.
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George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) British Dramatist, Critic, Novelist and Wit
There are not competent people enough in the world to go round; somebody must get the incompetent lawyers and doctors.
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Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)American – 3rd President of the United States: Letter, 1807
I believe we may safely affirm, that the inexperienced and presumptuous band of medical tyros let loose upon the world, destroy more of human life in one year than all the Robinhoods, Cartouches, & MacHeaths do in a century. Advice
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Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)English Author
The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quietand Doctor Merryman.
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Friedrich von Logau (1604-1655) (Salomon von Golaw) German Epigrammatist: Die Beste Arznei
Joy and Temperance and ReposeSlam the door on the doctor’s nose.
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H. G. Bohn (1796-1884) English Publisher Quoted in:Best Quotations for All Occasions
Nature, time, and patience are the three great physicians.
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Frances Willard (1839-1898) American Educator and Reformer: Francis Willard:Her Life and Work, Journal Entry
Here’s a recipe for the abolishment of the Blues which is worth a dozen medical nostrums: Take one spoonful of Pleasant memories.Take two spoonfuls of Endeavors for the Ÿ prolonging your life, only takes away your power of enjoying it.
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Valens (328?-378 A.D.) Roman Emperor of the East
Keep the physician from your door as long as you can.
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John Dryden (1631-1700) English Poet, Dramatist and Critic: Epistle to John Dryden of Chesterton
Better to hunt in fields for health unbought,Than fee the doctor for a nauseous draught.The wise for cure on exercise depend; God never made his work for man to mend.
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William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English Dramatist and Poet: Timon of Athens
Trust not the physician; His antidotes are poison, and he slays More than you rob.
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Sir William Osler (1849-1919) Canadian Physician and Professor
One of the first duties of the physician is to educate the masses not to take medicine.
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Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809-1894)American Physician & Humorist: Medical Essays
No families take so little medicine as those of doctors, except those of apothecaries.
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Francois Rabelais (1494?-1553) Pantagruel
We entrust…our bodies to physicians, who, to a man, loathe medicine and refuse to take physics.
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Anthony Burgess: Nothing Like the Sun
Keep away from physicians.It is all probing and guessing and pretending with them.They leave it to Nature to cure in her own time, but take the credit.As well as very fat fees.
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Lewis Thomas American Doctor Quoted in:New York Times, 7/4/76
The great secret of doctors, known only to their wives, but still hidden from the public, is that most things get better by themselves; most things, in fact, are better in the morning.
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Brock Chisholm
You can only cure retail but you can prevent wholesale.
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Chekhov (1860-1904)(Anton Pavlovich) Russian Writer and Dramatist: The Cherry Orchard
When a lot of remedies are suggested for a disease, that means it can’t be cured.
Nicholas Chamfort (1741-1794) French Wit and Writer
A doctor used to say:”Only heirs really pay well.”
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John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) British Economist: Best Things Anybody Ever Said
The patient is not likely to recover who makes the doctor his heir.
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Chekhov (1860-1904)(Anton Pavlovich) Russian Writer and Dramatist
Doctors are just the same as lawyers; the only difference is that lawyers merely rob you, whereas doctors rob you and kill you.
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Thomas Browne (1605-1682) English Author, Physician, and Philosopher
No one should approach the temple of science with the soul of a money changer.
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Walter Martin American Doctor – Former President of AMA: “Medicine and the Public Welfare”
The very success of medicine in a material way may now threaten the soul of medicine.
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Hippocrates (B.C. 460-370) Greek Physician and “Father of Medicine”
Wherever a doctor cannot do good, he must keep from doingharm.
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Florence Nightingale (1820-1910)English Nurse and Philanthropist
The very first requirement in a hospital is that it should do the sick no harm.
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Charles H. Mayo (1865-1939) American Surgeon
The sooner patients can be removed from the depressing influence of general hospital life the more rapid their convalescence.
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Lord Thomas Horder (1871-1955): Speech in House of Lords, 1936
It is the duty of a doctor to prolong life.It is not his duty to prolong the act of dying.
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Christian Barnard (b. 1922) South African Surgeon
The prime goal is to alleviate suffering, and not to prolong life.And if your treatment does not alleviate suffering, but only prolongs life, that treatment should be stopped.
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Francis Bacon (1561-1626) English Philosopher, Essayist and Statesman: The Advancement of Learning, Bk. II
The poets did well to conjoin Music and Medicine in Apollo;because the office of medicine is but to tune this curious harp of man’s body and to reduce it to harmony.
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Mondeville Quoted in: The Viking Book of Aphorisms, by W. H. Auden
Keep up the spirits of your patient with the music of the viol and the psaltery, or by forging letters telling of the death of his enemies, or (if he be a cleric) by informing him that he has been made a bishop.
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George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) British Dramatist, Critic, Novelist and Wit: Preface to: Misalliance
Optimistic lies have such immense therapeutic value that a doctor who cannot tell them convincingly has mistaken his profession.
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Hugh Cairns (1896-1952): Lancet
The good doctor, whether general practitioner or specialist, is also a man who studies the patient’s personality as wellas his disease.
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Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) Austrian Physician – Founder of Psychoanalysis: One of the Difficulties of Psychoanalysis
Look into the depths of your own soul and learn first to know yourself, then you will understand why this illness was bound to come upon you and perhaps you will thenceforthavoid falling ill.
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Muriel Spark (b. 1918)Scottish Writer
One should only see a psychiatrist out of boredom.
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Marvin Kitman Quoted in: Peter’s Quotations, Ideas for Our Time
The pen is mightier that the sword! The case forprescriptions rather than surgery.
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Hippocrates (B.C. 460-370) Greek Physician and “Father of Medicine”: About the Physician
He who wishes to be a surgeon should go to war.
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Robert Tuttle Morris (1857-1945) Doctors Versus Folks, Ch. 3
The greatest triumph of surgery today…lies in finding ways for avoiding surgery.
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John Kirklin American Surgeon Quoted in: Time, 5/3/63
Surgery is always second best.If you can do somethingelse, it’s better.
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Edward C. Lambert Quoted in: Barnes & Noble Book of Quotations
Those in the United States who, by and large, have the best medical care and advice readily available to them at the least expense are the families of the specialists in internal medicine.These families use less medicine andÅ but if I let the leg go, nobody can ever prove that it would not have mortified had I been obstinate.Operation is therefore the safe side for the surgeon as well as the lucrative side.
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Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?) American Journalist and Author
Before undergoing a surgical operation arrange your temporal affairs.You may live.
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You should consult my doctor.You will never live to regret it!
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Mark Twain (1835-1910) (Samuel Langhorne Clemens) American Humorist
Be careful about reading health books.You may die of a misprint.
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Erma Bombeck (b. 1927) American Writer
Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.
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Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) French Novelist: Dictionary of Accepted Ideas
Medicine:When in good health, make fun of it.
POETRY
Charles Churchill (1731-1764) English Poet and Satirist
The surest road to health, say what they will, Is never to suppose we shall be ill; – Most of those evils we poor mortals know,From doctors and imagination flow.
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JohnC. Lettsom Quoted in:Say it Again, edited by Dorothy Uris
When people’s ill, they come to I, I Physics, bleeds, and sweats ’em; Sometimes they live, sometimes they die. What’s that to I?I lets ’em.
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Sir Samuel Garth (1661-1719)English Physician and Poet: The Dispensary
One doctor, singly like the sculler plies, The patient struggles, and by inches dies; But two physicians, like a pair of oars, Waft him right swiftly to the Stygian shores.
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Maximillianus Urientius (1559-1613): The Physician, Surgeon, and Hangman
I tell you, the one by his drugs and pills,By his knife the other, the churchyard fills: The diff’rence only from the Hangman’s seen, Their work’s clumsy and slow, his quick and clean.
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Francis Beaumont (1584-1616) English Dramatist: The Spanish Curate
The doctors are our friends; wish them no ill, For though they kill but slow, they’re certain.
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Philip Massinger (1583-1640)English Dramatist
Out, ye impostors! Quack-salving, cheating mountebanks – your skill Is to make sound men sick, and sick men kill.
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Joseph Jekyll (1754-1837)
The parson shows the way to heaven,And then with tender care
The doctor consummates the work And sends the patient there.
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Samuel Butler (1612-1680) English Poet Hudibras
For men are brought to worse distresses, By taking physic, than diseases; And therefore commonly recover,As soon as doctors give them over.
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Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?) American Journalist and Author: The Devil’s Dictionary
Body-snatcher, n. A robber of grave-worms. One who supplies the young physicians with that with which the old physicians havesupplied the undertaker.
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Mark Twain (1835-1910) (Samuel Langhorne Clemens) American Humorist
He has been a doctor a year now and has had two patients – no three, I think – yes, it was three; I attended theirfunerals. In this combination, you’ll readily see, You’ve most all that’s needed to be an M.D.
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17th Century Poem
First of the pedant you borrow the air,And with a long wig cover up all your hair:Then trick out your habit with fur and satin,And constantly babble in Greek and Latin. I mean to put them in their place.
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Thomas Wolfe (1900-1938)American Novelist: Cursory Rhymes, “Poems Against Doctors,” I
The doctors are a frightful race.I can’t see how they have the face to go on practicing their base profession; but in any case
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William Snowden Battles (1827-1895?): A Doctor’s Dream
For many hold ‘twould be so hard Through Heaven’s gate to wheedle A doctor as to drive a camel through A hypodermic needle.So that you and your heirs May be properly billed.
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John Dryden (1631-1700) English Poet, Dramatist and Critic: To John Dryden, Esq.
So liv’d our sires ere doctors learn’d to kill,And multiplied with theirs the weekly bill.
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Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953)English Author
They answered, as they took their fees,”There is no cure for this disease.”
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Ogden Nash (1902-1971)American Humorous Poet
Professional men, they have no cares; whatever happens, they get theirs.
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John Gay (1688-1732) English Playwright and Poet: Fables I:”The Sick Man and the Angel”
“Is there no hope?” the sick man said. The silent doctor shook his head.And took his leave with signs of sorrow, Despairing of his fee tomorrow. While back of the tongue in a solo game Sat Dangerous Ah Kerchoo.And watching his luck was his light of love The malady
Hector Berlioz (1803-1869)French Composer: Memoirs
At the sight of that terrible charnel house – the fragments of limbs, the grinning heads and gaping skulls,the bloody quagmire underfoot and the atrocious smell it gave off, the swarms of sparrow wrangling over scraps ofæ delightful place their ration of lung…tossing a shoulder-blade to a great rat who was staring at me with famished eyes.
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Eugene Field (1850-1895)American Poet and Journalist: Doctors
When one’s all right, he’s prone to spite The doctor’s peaceful mission; But when he’s sick, it’s loud and quickHe bawls for a physician.
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Matthew Arnold (1822-1888)English Poet and Critic: A Wish
Nor bring to watch me cease to live Some Doctor, full of phrase and fame To shake his sapient head and give The ill he can not cure – a name. That I abandon all my vicesNor pull a long face in a crisis,But with a twinkle in his eyeWill tell me that I have to die.
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Wystan Hugh Auden (1907-1973) American Poet and and Writer: “Footnotes to Dr. Sheldon”
Give me a doctor partridge-plump,Short in the leg and broad in the rump,An endomorph with gentle hands Who’ll never make absurd demands
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Graham Greene (1904-1991): Travels With My Aunt
The first sign of his approaching end was when my old aunts, while undressing him, removed a toe with one of his socks.
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James Joyce (1882-1941) Irish Novelist: Ulysses
A cough ball of laughter leaped from his throat dragging after it a rattling chain of phlegm.
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Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774) English Poet and Prose Writer
The doctor found, when she was dead, Her last disorder mortal.
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Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) American Poet
Surgeons must be very careful When they take the knife!Underneath their fine incisions Stirs the Culprit – Life!
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Thomas Randolph (1605-1635) English Poet and Dramatist
He’s a bad surgeon, that, for pity, spares The part corrupted, till the gangrene spread,, And all the body perish; he that’s mercifulUnto the bad, is cruel to the just.
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H. G. Wells (1866-1946) (Reginald Bliss) English Novelist and Sociologist: Bealby
The thought of dentists gave him just the same sick horror as the thought of socialism.
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Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809-1894)American Author, Physician and Humorist Rip Van Winkle, M.D., Canto II
He had, in fact, an ancient, mildewed air, A long gray beard, a plenteous lack of hair,-The musty look that always recommendsYour good old Doctor to his ailing friends. If there’s good reason why I wait, like your day’s hectic pace Explain, don’t just ignore.I’ll try to take it with good grace. And will you kindly book appointments with a schedule you can keep?Then patients won’t be herded like a flock of stupid sheep. JOKES
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Patient: How do my X-rays look Doctor? Doctor:Well I just talked to my accountant and it looks like you’re going to need surgery.
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Archie Bunker
All in the Family – TV ShowAll them surgeons – they’re highway robbers.Why do you think they wear masks when they work on you?
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Herb Shriner (1918-1970)American Entertainer
Our doctor would never really operate unless it wasnecessary.He was just that way.If he didn’t need the money, he wouldn’t lay a hand on you.
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Joey Bishop (b. 1918)
American Comedian My doctor is wonderful. Once, in 1955, when I couldn’t afford an operation, he touched up the X-rays.
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Cartoon caption in S.F. Examiner 1992
Doctor to patient being prepared for an operation: “We’re going to have to knock you out.Would you like anesthetic or a peek at your bill?
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Francis O’Walsh Quoted ineter’s Quotations, ed. by Laurence J. Peter
A hospital should also have a recovery room adjoining thecashier’s office.
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Groucho Marx (1890-1977)(Julius H. Marx) American Comedic Entertainer
A hospital bed is a parked taxi with the meter running.
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L.Arnot L. Sheppard, Jr.
Is the time coming when it will be spelled ho$pital?
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Now I know where the phrase “family doctor” comes from.For what he charges, you could raise a family.
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I think I know why doctors call it your annual checkup. Each year what goes up is your check.
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I went to a doctor for a complete checkup and the firstthing he did while I undressed was to examine my wallet.
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From Cartoon in the Sunday, S.F. Examiner
One person to another:”My doctor told me my illness was psychosomatic so I wrote him an imaginary check.”
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Walter Matthau (b. 1920)American Actor
My doctor gave me six months to live but when I couldn’t pay the bill he gave me six months more.
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Q:How many doctors does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A:It depends on whether or not the bulb has health insurance.
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Specialist:A doctor who has patients trained to become ill only during office hours.
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We’re living in an age of medical specialists.Nowadays what four out of five doctors recommend is another doctor.
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Proverb
One doctor makes work for another.
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Q: What do they the call the person who came in 99th in a class of 99 medical students?
A: Doctor. Frankly, I’d have been better off staying here.”
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Exhausted by long, tense months of work, the doctordecides to unwind by going on a safari.When he returns,his nurse asks him how he enjoyed himself. “It was terrible,”he said,”I didn’t kill a thing.
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Denis Diderot (1713-1784) French Philosopher, Critic and Encyclopedist
The best doctor is the one you run for and can’t find.
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Patient 1:You say this doctor has a large practice?
Patient 2:It’s so large that when a patient has nothing the matter with him he tells him so.
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Q:Am I getting better, Doctor?
A:I don’t know, let me feel your purse.
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Patient 1:The doctor said he’d have me on my feet within two weeks.
Patient 2:And did he?
Patient 1:Sure.I had to sell my automobile.
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Yes, the doctor will consider a house call.What time can you be at his house?
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According to the sage, an internist knows everything and does nothing, a surgeon does everything and knows nothing, and a psychiatrist knows nothing and does nothing.Only a pathologist knows everything and does everything…too late.
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Carrie Snow Quoted in: The Quotable Quote Book, ed. by Merrit Malloy
A male gynecologist is like an auto mechanic who has never owned a car.
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He was a gynecologist with a sense of humor:whenever hemade the rounds at the old age home, he introduced himself as a spreader of old wives’ tails.
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Dr. Rush, the pediatrician, was a man known to have very little patients…
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Nipsey Russell (b. 1924)American Entertainer
Did you hear about the dermatologist who built his practice very deliberately?… He started from scratch.
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Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?) American Journalist and Author: The Devil’s Dictionary
Dentist, n. A prestidigitator who, putting metal into your mouth, pulls coins out of your pocket.
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My dentist is painless.HE doesn’t feel a thing.
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George D. Prentice (1802-1870)American Journalist and Humorist
A dentist at work in his vocation always looks down in the mouth.
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Erma Bombeck (b. 1927)American Writer
Never accept a drink from a urologist.
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Flash Gordon, M.D.: Posted on “The Well”
Q. Why do some docs have the attitude they do?
A. They think “M.D.” stands for “minor deity.”
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Don Quinn Quoted inictionary of Quotable Definitions
Doctor – The middleman between the bird with the big bill and the guy with the big sickle.
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J. Chalmers Da Costa (1863-1933): The Trials and Triumphs of the Surgeon
A fashionable surgeon like a pelican can be recognized bythe size of his bill.
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Judge Tudor Rees: News Review (11/27/47)
Doctors really must get typewriters.This lady is suffering from something unreadable.
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Anonymous Veterinary Surgeon
None of my patients are hypochondriacs but you should see some of the owners.
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Leo Rosten: Hooray for Yiddish
When there’s a cure, it was only half a disease.
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Franklin P. Adams (1881-1960) (F.P.A.) American Journalist and Humorist
A psychiatrist is a fellow who asks you a lot of expensive questions your wife asks for nothing.
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Maxwell Hyman Quoted in: Dictionary of Quotable Definitions
Psychiatrist – Someone who will listen to you as long as you don’t make sense.
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Anonymous
You go to a psychiatrist when you’re slightly crackedand keep going until you’re completely broke.
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Samuel Goldwyn (1882-1974) (Samuel Goldfish) American Motion Picture Producer: The Great Goldwyn
Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined.
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Anonymous The Wit of Medicine (ed. L. and M. Cowan)
Psychiatry – the care of the id by the odd.
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Karl Kraus (1874-1936)Austrian Satirist, Critic and Poet
Psychoanalysts are father confessors who like to listen to the sins of the fathers as well.
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Gilbert K. Chesterton (1874-1936) English Novelist and Essayist
Psychoanalysis is confession without absolution.
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Mervyn Stockwood (b. 1913)British Clergyman
A psychiatrist is a man who goes to the Folies Bergere and looks at the audience.
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Unknown
A job-weary woman on vacation sent her psychotherapist a card.She wrote, “Having a wonderful time – wish you were here to tell me why.”thing like that trouble you!”
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Then there was a man who complained to his psychiatrist that he had an inferiority complex about the diminutive size of his penis. Smiling, the shrink said, “Oh, I wouldn’t let a little 8 “WHAT!” shrieked the horrified doctor.”That’s the best part.”
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There was a loud rap on the door and the psychiatrist hurried to answer it.”Doc,” said a frightened voice.”I must speak to you about my brother.He break thermometers, drinks the mercury and throws the glass away.”
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David Mercer: A Suitable Case for Treatment, BBC TV, 1962
Did you hear what the white rat said to the otherwhite rat? . . . I’ve got that psychologist so welltrained that every time I ring the bell he bringsme something to eat.
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Q. How many psychiatrists does it take to change a lightbulb?
A. Only one, but the light bulb has to really WANT to change.
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David Grimes S.F. Chronicle 1992
What doctors say: “I’d like to run that test again.”
What they mean: “The lab lost your blood sample.”
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When I told my doctor about my loss of memory he made me pay in advance.
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Robin O’Donnell Posted on “The Well”
Doctor, Doctor, my brother thinks he’s a chicken.Bring him in, I think I can cure that. I would, Doc, but we need the eggs.
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A hospital is a place where people who are run down generally wind up.
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Feeling her way into the optometrist’s office, Sallysaid, “I sat on my eyeglasses and busted them.Will the doctor have to examine me all over again?””No,” said the receptionist.”Just your eyes.”with your dentistry.”
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Q:Know why the prettiest nurse at the hospital is known as “Appendix?”
A:Only the doctors are allowed to take her out.