Medical Wisdom Quotes

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure understated.

The art of healing comes from nature not from the physician. Therefore the physician must start from nature, with an open mind.

Every physician must be rich in knowledge, and not only of that which is written in books; his patients should be his book, they will never mislead him.

Even the mind depends so much on temperament and the disposition of one's bodily organs that, if it is possible to find a way to make people generally more wise and more skilful than they have been in the past, I believe that we should look for it in medicine. It is true that medicine as it is currently practiced contains little of much use.

If popular medicine gave the people wisdom as well as knowledge, it would be the best protection for scientific and well-trained physicians.

Remember. You are a physician. You are not a policeman nor are you a minister of religion. You must take people as they come. Remember, too that though you will generally know more about the condition than the patient, it is the patient who has the condition and this if nothing else bestows on him or her a kind of wisdom. You have the knowledge but that does not entitle you to be superior. Knowledge makes you the servant not the master.

A wise doctor does not mutter incantations over a sore that needs the knife.

Many of our problems in US maternity care stem from the fact that we leave no room for recognizing when nature is smarter than we are.

A doctor who doesn't say too many foolish things is a patient half-cured.

Foolish the doctor who despises the knowledge acquired by the ancients.