Physicians

"The objection made to the numerical method, to wit, the difficulty or impossibility of forming classes of similar facts, is alike applicable to all the methods that might be substituted; that it is impossible to appreciate each case with mathematical exactness, and it is precisely on this account that enumeration becomes necessary; by so doing, the errors, (which are inevitable,) being the same in two groups of patients subjected to different treatment, mutually compensate each other, and they may be disregarded without sensibly affecting the exactness of the results."

"In any epidemic... let us suppose five hundred of the sick, taken indiscriminately, to be subjected to one kind of treatment, and five hundred others, taken in the same manner, to be treated in a different mode; if the mortality is greater among the first, than among the second, must we not conclude that the treatment was less appropriate, or less efficacious in the first class, than in the second ? It is unavoidable; for among so large a collection, similarities of condition will necessarily be met with, and all things being equal, except the treatment, the conclusion will be rigorous."

"Pierre Charles Alexandre Louis should be honored as a primary author of the "numerical method." By "numerical method" he meant that the stages of disease and therapeutic outcomes should be expressed in terms of numbers and not merely as a set of verbal descriptions. ...This method seems so sensible that it is difficult to see why it was resisted by the medical establishment."

"All [knowledge] comes from experience, it is true, but experience is nothing if it does not form collections of similar facts. Now, to make collections is to count."

"From the exposition of facts... we infer that bloodletting has had very little influence on the progress of pneumonitis, of erysipelas of the face, and of angina tonsillaris, in the cases under my observation; that its influence has not been more evident in the cases bled copiously and repeatedly, than in those bled only once and to a small amount; that, we do not at once arrest inflammations, as is too often fondly imagined; that, in cases where appears to be otherwise, it is undoubtedly owing, either to an error in diagnosis, or to the fact that the bloodletting was practised at an advanced period of the disease, when it had nearly run its course; that, it would be well, nevertheless, in inflammations of imminent hazard, pneumonitis, for instance, to try whether a first bleeding sufficient to produce syncope, from twenty-five to thirty ounces or more, would not be attended with greater success; and finally that, wherever I have been able to compare the effect of general, with that of local bleeding by leeches, the superiority of the former has appeared to me demonstrated."

"By the middle of the 1830s the numerical method, which Louis enshrined as the doctrinal heart of his new Société médicale d'observation, had become probably the most fiercely contested proposition in all of French medicine."

"[John P.] Bull... wrote his history of the clinical trial in 1951. He argued that the conduct of "clinical trials" can be traced to the ancient Egyptians. ...Highlighting historic events—such as Avicenna's rules for testing drugs, Francis Bacon's suggestion of a committee of physicians to judge therapeutic efficacy, James Lind's comparative trial of scurvy "cures", and P.C.A. Louis's application of his numerical method in the clinic—Bull presents a linear account of the development of the clinical trial. The implication... is that, cumulatively, these historic experiments made the clinical trial progressively more scientific."

"Between the one who counts the facts, grouped according to their resemblance, in order to know what to believe regarding the value of therapeutic agents and him who does not count but always says "more or less frequent," there is the difference between truth and error, between something that is clear and truly scientific and something that is vague and without value—for what place is there in Science for that which is vague?"

"Without the aid of statistics nothing like real medicine is possible."

"The more you speak of yourself, the more you are likely to lie; say but little, 'twill scarcely gain belief; so strong are partiality and envy."

"“Mr. Vice President. No numbers, no bubbles.”"

"“There’s no room for facts when our minds are occupied by fear.”"

"It this terrible simplification that there is one Africa, and things go on in one way in Africa. We have to stop that, it is not respectful, and it's not very clever to think that way. I had the fortune to live and work for a time in the United States. I found out that Salt Lake City and San Francisco were different. And so it is in Africa, it's a lot of difference. What do we think it would be concurrency? And what is concurrency? In Sweden, we have no concurrency. We have serial monogamy. Vodka New Year's Eve, new partner for the spring, vodka Midsummer Eve, new partner for the fall, vodka, and it goes on like this, you know, and you collect a big number of ex's, and we've got a terrible chlamydia epidemic."

"Les médecins administrent des médicaments dont ils savent très peu, à des malades dont ils savent moins, pour guérir des maladies dont ils ne savent rien."

"Leonard McCoy: I'm a doctor, not a [moon shuttle conductor/bricklayer/psychiatrist/mechanic/engineer/scientist/physicist/escalator/magician/miracle worker/flesh peddler/veterinarian]."

"For the first time in our tradition there was a complete separation between killing and curing. Throughout the primitive world the doctor and the sorcerer tended to be the same person. He with power to kill had power to cure, including specially the undoing of his own killing activities...This is a priceless possession which we cannot afford to tarnish, but society always is attempting to make the physician into a killer— to kill the defective child at birth, to leave the sleeping pills beside the bed of the cancer patient. It is the duty of society to protect the physician from such requests."

"Beverly Crusher: Where are the calluses we doctors are supposed to grow over our feelings?"

"First do no harm. (Latin: Primum non nocere)"

"Thou speak’st like a physician, Helicanus, That ministers a potion unto me That thou wouldst tremble to receive thyself."

"I was feeling, so bad I asked my family doctor just what I had I said Doctor (Doctor) Mr. M.D. (Doctor) Now can you tell me what's ailing me (Doctor) He said yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah (Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah)"

"As to diseases, make a habit of two things—to help, or at least to do no harm."

"There is sometimes more Skill shewed by a Physician in not Prescribing, than in Prescribing. And there is no better Remedy for some Diseases, than to let them alone : for unseasonable meddling with them, may hinder their proceeding to a Crisis, and at long Run they will mend of themselves."

"As testy sick men when their deaths be near, No news but health from their physicians know."

"Bugs Bunny: What's up doc?"

"A god, as I have said, commanded me to tell the first use also, and he himself knows that I have shrunk from its obscurity. He knows too that not only here but also in many other places in these commentaries, if it depended on me, I would omit demonstrations requiring astronomy, geometry, music, or any other logical discipline, lest my books should be held in utter detestation by physicians. For truly on countless occasions throughout my life I have had this experience; persons for a time talk pleasantly with me because of my work among the sick, in which they think me very well trained, but when they learn later on that I am also trained in mathematics, they avoid me for the most part and are no longer at all glad to be with me. Accordingly, I am always wary of touching on such subjects, and in this case it is only in obedience to the command of a divinity, as I have said, that I have used the theorems of geometry"

"He who has two cakes of bread, let him dispose of one of them for some flowers of the narcissus; for bread is the food of the body, and the narcissus is the food of the soul."

"Diogenes compared them to fig-trees growing over precipices; for their fruit was devoured by daws and crows, not by men."

"That which is, grows, while that which is not, becomes."

"Much music marreth men's manners."

"Diogenes received an invitation to dine with one whose house was splendidly furnished, in the highest order and taste, and nothing therein wanting. Diogenes, hawking, and as if about to spit, looked in all directions, and finding nothing adapted thereto, spat right in the face of the master. He, indignant, asked why he did so? "Because," Diogenes, "I saw nothing so dirty and filthy in all your house. For the walls were covered with pictures, the floors of the most precious tessellated character — and ranged with the various images of gods, and other ornamental figures.""

"Diogenes the Cynic, it is related, was mighty of all people in regard to everything from self-control to endurance. He indulged in sexual lusts, not associating it with pleasure, an attractive good thing to some, but because of the harm that the retention of semen would cause if he avoided the habit of releasing it. When a prostitute who promised to visit him was delayed for some time, he rubbed his genitals with his hand, ejecting semen. After the whore arrived, he sent her away, saying: "my hand celebrated the wedding-hymn first." But it is clearly correct that, likewise, the disciplined man does not on account of pleasure indulge in lusts, but in order to relieve the hindrance acting as if this was not associated with pleasure."

"It would be better, I think, for the man who really seeks the truth not to ask what the poets say; rather, he should first learn the method of finding the scientific premises that I discussed in the second book; then he should train and exercise himself in this method; and when his training is sufficiently advanced, then, as he approaches each particular problem, he should enquire into the premise needed for proving it, which premise he should take from simple sense-perception, which from experience, whether drawn from life or from the arts, which from the truths clearly apprehended by the mind, in order to draw out from them the desired conclusion."

"But it is best of all to look at the human skeleton with your own eyes."

"The laws of nature, as analyzed mathematically and descriptively by Ptolemy and Galen, bore an interesting, and perhaps not entirely accidental similarity to the law of nations and of nature, as discerned by a long succession of Roman jurists. ...The concept of an objective law applicable to human affairs, yet operating in accord with Nature and Reason and apart both from divine revelation and from human whim or passion, was peculiar to Rome and societies descended from Rome."

"The Roman physician Galen claimed that women could not conceive in rape—could not, in fact, conceive without an orgasm based in pleasure and consent."

"Triste est omne animale post coitum, praeter mulierem gallumque"

"Quod optimus medicus sit quoque philosophus."

"This misplacing hath caused a deficience, or at least a great improficience in the sciences themselves. For the handling of final causes, mixed with the rest in physical inquiries, hath intercepted the severe and diligent inquiry of all real and physical causes, and given men the occasion to stay upon these satisfactory and specious causes, to the great arrest and prejudice of further discovery. For this I find done not only by Plato, who ever anchoreth upon that shore, but by Aristotle, Galen, and others which do usually likewise fall upon these flats of discoursing causes."

"Employment is Nature's physician, and is essential to human happiness."

"Galen himself, who was not unacquainted with Moses's writings, and with christianity, fancy'd the earth had a certain soul or mind imparted to it by the superior bodies."

"The fact is that those who are enslaved to their sects are not merely devoid of all sound knowledge, but they will not even stop to learn!"

"Galen, in the third section of his book, "The Use of the Limbs," says correctly that it would be in vain to expect to see living beings formed of the blood of menstruous women and the semen virile, who will not die, will never feel pain, or will move perpetually, or shine like the sun. This dictum of Galen is part of the following more general proposition:—Whatever is formed of matter receives the most perfect form possible in that species of matter; in each individual case the defects are in accordance with that individual matter."

"The one for whom the day of ‘Āshūrā is a day of tragedy, grief and weeping, Allah The Mighty, The Glorious, shall make the Day of Judgment, a day of joy and happiness for him."

"Reason is a free gift from God and politeness is acquisition. He who undertakes politeness has power over it. He who undertakes reason increases (himself) through that nothing but ignorance."

"He who takes himself to account gets benefitted, and the one who gets negligent and careless about himself bears loss. The one who fears (Allah) becomes peaceful, and the one who takes lesson becomes most clear sighted and discerning. He who becomes most clear sighted, understands; and he who understands and comprehends becomes knowledgeable and informed."

"Worship is not the abundance of prayer and fasting; rather it is the abundance of reflecting on the affairs of God, the Great and Almighty."

"Man is not worshipful unless he is clement."

"The worst of men is he who stops his contributions to charity, eats by himself, and whips his slave."

"One who offers (suggests) what he doesn't know, will be under the curse of the angels of the heavens and the earth."

"Assisting the weak is better for you than your act of charity."