Great Throughts Treasury

"One of the first duties of the physician is to educate the masses not to take medicine... Soap and water and common sense are the best disinfectants."

"One special advantage of the skeptical attitude of mind is that a man is never vexed to find that after all he has been in the wrong."

"One swallow does not a summer make, but one tophus makes gout and one crescent, malaria."

"Our bowels are outside of us?just a tucked-in portion."

"Patients should have rest, food, fresh air, and exercise ? the quadrangle of health."

"Perhaps no sin so easily besets us as a sense of self-satisfied superiority to others."

"Quit worrying about your health. It'll go away."

"Save the fleeting minute; learn gracefully to dodge the bore."

"Shut out all of your past except that which will help you weather your tomorrows."

"Soap and water and common sense are the best disinfectants."

"Start at once a bed-side library and spend the last half hour of the day in communion with the saints of humanity."

"Study until twenty-five, investigate until forty, profession until sixty, at which age I would have him retired on a double allowance."

"Surrounded by people who demand certainty, ? and not philosopher enough to agree with Locke that "Probability supplies the defect of our knowledge and guides us when that fails, and is always conversant about things of which we have no certainty," the practitioner too often gets into a habit of mind which resents the thought that opinion, not full knowledge, must be his stay and prop. There is no discredit, though there is at times much discomfort, in this everlasting perhaps with which we have to preface so much connected with the practice of our art. It is, as I said, inherent in the subject."

"Take the sum of human achievement in action, in science, in art, in literature?subtract the work of the men above forty, and while we should miss great treasures, even priceless treasures, we would practically be where we are today.... The effective, moving, vitalizing work of the world is done between the ages of twenty-five and forty."

"Taking a lady?s hand gives her confidence in her physician."

"That man can interrogate as well as observe nature was a lesson slowly learned in his evolution."

"The aim of a school should be to have these departments in the charge of men who have, first, enthusiasm that deep love of a subject, that desire to teach and extend it without which all instruction becomes cold and lifeless; secondly, a full personal knowledge of the branch taught; not a second-hand information derived from books, but the living experience derived from experimental and practical work in the best laboratories. ? Thirdly, men are required who have a sense of obligation, that feeling which impels a teacher to be also a contributor, and to add to the stores from which he so freely draws."

"The conglomeration which we call society is built upon a tripod ? the school-house, the hospital and the jail, which minister respectively to the manners, the maladies and the morals of man."

"The critical sense and skeptical attitude of the Hippocratic school laid the foundations of modern medicine on broad lines, and we owe to it: first, the emancipation of medicine from the shackles of priestcraft and of caste; secondly, the conception of medicine as an art based on accurate observation, and as a science, an integral part of the science of man and of nature; thirdly, the high moral ideals, expressed in that most "memorable of human documents" (Gomperz), the Hippocratic oath; and fourthly, the conception and realization of medicine as the profession of a cultivated gentleman."

"The doctor who treats himself has a fool for a patient."

"The dry formal lecture never, or at any rate rarely, touches the heart, but it is in [the] conversational method of the seminar, or in the quiet evening at home, with a select group and a few good editions of a favorite author, that the enthusiasm of the teacher becomes contagious."

"The extraordinary development of modern science may be her undoing. Specialism, now a necessity, has fragmented the specialities themselves in a way that makes the outlook hazardous. The workers lose all sense of proportion in a maze of minutiae."

"The first duties of the physician is to educate the masses not to take medicine."

"The first step toward success in any occupation is to become interested in it."

"The four points of a medical student's compass are inspection, palpation, percussion and auscultation."

"The future belongs to Science. More and more she will control the destinies of the nations. Already she has them in her crucible and on her balances."

"The future is today."

"The good physician treats the disease; the great physician treats the patient who has the disease."

"The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism"

"The higher education so much needed today is not given in the school, is not to be bought in the market place, but it has to be wrought out in each one of us for himself; it is the silent influence of character on character."

"The higher the standard of education in a profession, the less marked will be the charlatanism."

"The incessant concentration of thought upon one subject, however interesting, tethers a man's mind in a narrow field."

"The librarian of today, and it will be true still more of the librarians of tomorrow, are not fiery dragons interposed between the people and the books. They are useful public servants, who manage libraries in the interest of the public . . . Many still think that a great reader, or a writer of books, will make an excellent librarian. This is pure fallacy."

"The only way to treat the common cold is with contempt."

"The person who takes medicine must recover twice, once from the disease ,and once from the medicine."

"The practice of medicine is an art, not a trade; a calling, not a business; a calling in which your heart will be exercised equally with your head. Often the best part of your work will have nothing to do with potions and powders, but with the exercise of an influence of the strong upon the weak, of the righteous upon the wicked, of the wise upon the foolish."

"The Scots are the backbone of Canada. They are all right in their three vital parts ? head, heart and haggis."

"The search for static security ? in the law and elsewhere ? is misguided. The fact is security can only be achieved through constant change, adapting old ideas that have outlived their usefulness to current facts."

"The search of science for the spirits has been neither long nor earnest; nor is it a matter of surprise that it has not been undertaken earlier by men whose training had fitted them for the work. It is no clear, vasty deep, but a muddy, Acheronian pool in which our modern spirits dwell, with Circe as the presiding deity and the Witch of Endor as her high priestess. Commingling with the solemn incantations of the devotees who throng the banks, one can hear the mocking laughter of Puck and of Ariel, as they play among the sedges and sing the monotonous refrain, "What fools these mortals be!" Sadly besmirched, and more fitted for a sojourn in Ancyra than in Athens, has been the condition of those who have returned from the quest, and we cannot wonder that scientific men have hesitated to stir the pool and risk a touch from Circe's wand. All the more honour to those who have with honest effort striven to pierce the veil and explore the mysteries which lie behind it."

"The second ideal has been to act the Golden Rule, as far as in me lay, toward my professional brethren and toward the patients committed to my care. And the third has been to cultivate such a measure of equanimity as would enable me to bear success with humility, the affection of my friends without pride, and to be ready when the day of sorrow and grief came, to meet it with the courage befitting a man. What the future has in store for me, I cannot tell ? you cannot tell. Nor do I care much, so long as I carry with me, as I shall, the memory of the past you have given me. Nothing can take that away."

"The successful teacher is no longer on a height, pumping knowledge at high pressure into passive receptacles."

"The teacher's life should have three periods, study until twenty-five, investigation until forty, profession until sixty, at which age I would have him retired on a double allowance."

"The trained nurse has become one of the great blessings of humanity, taking a place beside the physician and the priest, and not inferior to either in her mission."

"The value of experience is not in seeing much, but in seeing wisely."

"The very first step towards success in any occupation is to become interested in it."

"The young doctor should look about early for an avocation, a pastime, that will take him away from patients, pills, and potions . . . No [person] is really happy or safe without one, and it makes precious little difference what the outside interest may be ? botany, beetles or butterflies, roses, tulips, or irises, fishing mountaineering or antiquities ? anything will do so long as he straddles a hobby and rides it hard."

"The young physician starts life with 20 drugs for each disease, and the old physician ends life with one drug for 20 diseases."

"There are no straight backs, no symmetrical faces, many wry noses, and no even legs. We are a crooked and perverse generation."

"There are only two sorts of doctors: those who practice with their brains, and those who practice with their tongues."

"There are three classes of human beings: men, women and women physicians."