Abraham Verghese Quotes

My sense is that the wonderful technology that we have to visualize the inside of the body often leaves physicians feeling that the exam is a waste of time and so they may shortchange the ritual.

The world we live in is not purely visual. For me it's totally poly-sensorial so the tactile, sensual aspect of living in the work that I do is brought to the fore.

Ordinarily pleasure and pain are regarded as different from sensations.

In 1970 I realized that there was negligible risk from x-rays but many radiographs had poor image quality so that the risk from a false negative was significant.

The doctors x-rayed my head and found nothing.

You learned the concept 'pain' when you learned language.

The doctor unfortunately said I was fit.

Modern medicine uses imaging 'windows' such as magnetic resonance imaging scanners to bring into view otherwise unseen vital information that skilled physicians can use for the benefit of their patients.

The role of radiologists will evolve from doing perceptual things that could probably be done by a highly trained pigeon to doing far more cognitive things.

Beauty is an experience, nothing else. It is not a fixed pattern or an arrangement of features. It is something felt, a glow or a communicated sense of fineness.

All pain is the same. Only the details are different.

Letter from Mr. B: Why does a back scratch feel better coming from somebody else than if you do it yourself?

We can land men on the moon, but, for all our mechanical and electronic wizardry, we cannot reproduce an artificial fore-finger that can feel as well as beckon.

It is within the experience of everyone that when pleasure and pain reach a certain intensity they are indistinguishable.

The physician cannot prescribe by letter, he must feel the pulse.

Pain is less subject than pleasure to careless expression.

But I like the feel of men on things, while they're alive. There's a feel of men about trucks, because they've been handled with men's hands, all of them.

Touch is the meaning of being human.

I am very astonished that the scientific picture of the real world around me is deficient. It gives a lot of factual information, puts all our experience in a magnificently consistent order, but it is ghastly silent about all and sundry that is really near to our heart, that really matters to us. It cannot tell us a word about red and blue, bitter and sweet, physical pain and physical delight; it knows nothing of beautiful and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity.

For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe anything but the perception.

You decide for yourself when it will hurt.

Each person feels pain in his own way, each has his own scars.

It is, as Mr. Rokesmith says, a matter of feeling, but Lor how many matters ARE matters of feeling!

Outside advice can only tell you how a decision looks. Only you can know how it feels. The best decisions look and feel right.