Medicine, being a compendium of the successive and contradictory mistakes of medical practitioners, when we summon the wisest of them to our aid, the chances are that we may be relying on a scientific truth the error of which will be recognized in a few years' time. - Marcel Proust. So many come to the sickroom thinking of themselves as men of science fighting disease and not as healers with a little knowledge helping nature to get a sick man well. - Sir Auckland Geddes The art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while nature cures the disease. - Voltaire Life is not living, but living in health. - Martial, Roman poet At the end of this time the candidate was required to pass an examination, and then to take an oath promising to uphold the teachings of the school, to administer no noxious drug, to teach nothing false, and not to keep an apothecary shop. - Katherine B. Shippen, writing about the requirements of the medical school of Salerno in the 13th century, in Men of Medicine Most men die of their remedies, not of their illnesses. - Moliere In all the controversies over what the causes of diversities might be, no one seems to have paid much attention to the factor in the environment that has the most obvious effect on any organism: food. - Michael Crawford & David Marsh, The Driving Force: Food in Evolution and the Future We chat together; he gives me prescriptions; I never follow them so I get well. - Molière Eat well, drink in moderation, and sleep sound, in these three ... good health abounds. - Latin Proverb An early morning walk is a blessing for the whole day. - Henry David Thoreau The preservation of health is a duty. Few seem conscious that there is such a thing as physical morality. - Herbert Spencer Most over-the-counter and almost all prescribed drug treatments merely mask symptoms or control health problems or in some way alter the way organs or systems such as the circulatory system work. Drugs almost never deal with the reasons why these problems exist, while they frequently create new health problems as side effects of their activities. - John R. Lee, M.D. The doctor of the future will give no medication, but will interest his patients in the care of the human frame, diet and in the cause and prevention of disease.- Thomas A Edison Heredity is nothing but stored environment. - Luther Burbank Physicians of the utmost fame were called at once, but when they came they answered, as they took their fees, 'There is no cure for this disease.' Hilare Belloc What is dangerous about tranquilizers is that whatever peace of mind they bring is packaged peace of mind. Where you buy a pill and buy peace with it, you get conditioned to cheap solutions instead of deep ones. - Max Lerner Medicine is a collection of uncertain prescriptions, the results of which taken collectively, are more fatal than useful to mankind. Water, air and cleanliness are the chief articles in my pharmacopeia. - Napoleon Bonaparte Since the human body tends to move in the direction of its expectations--plus or minus---it is important to know that attitudes of confidence and determination are no less a part of the treatment program than medical and science technology. - Norman Cousin The very first requirement of a hospital is that it should do the sick no harm. - Florence Nightingale Doctors give drugs of which they know little, into bodies, of which they know less, for diseases of which they know nothing at all. - Voltaire [...] the estimated total number of iatrogenic deaths—that is, deaths induced inadvertently by a physician or surgeon or by medical treatment or diagnostic procedures— in the US annually is 783,936.......while 553,251 died of cancer. - Gary Null, et al., Death by Medicine ~~~~~~~~ h.n.
