Medicine is the only profession that labours incessantly to destroy the reason for its existence. James Bryce
The art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while nature cures the disease. Voltaire
Medicine is a science of uncertainty and an art of probability. William Osler
To array a man’s will against his sickness is the supreme art of medicine. Henry Ward Beecher
Health is the state about which medicine has nothing to say. W H Auden
Medicine to produce health must examine disease; and music, to create harmony must investigate discord. Plutarch
Medicine is learned by the bedside and not in the classroom. Let not your conceptions of disease come from words heard in the lecture room or read from the book. See, and then reason and compare and control. But see first. William Osler
The whole imposing edifice of modern medicine, for all its breathtaking successes, is, like the celebrated Tower of Pisa, slightly off balance. It is frightening how dependent on drugs we are all becoming and how easy it is for doctors to prescribe them as the universal panacea for our ills. Prince Charles
Nothing in medicine is so insignificant as to merit attention. Thomas Sydenham
The art of medicine was to be properly learned only from its practice and its exercise. Thomas Sydenham
The arrival of a good clown exercises a more beneficial influence upon the health of a town than of twenty asses laden with drugs. Thomas Sydenham
As no man can say who it was that first invented the use of clothes and houses against the inclemency of the weather, so also can no investigator point out the origin of Medicine – mysterious as the source of the Nile. Thomas Sydenham
The excellence of the art of medicine does not depend on elegant prescriptions but on observation. Thomas Sydenham
Nothing more strikingly betrays the credulity of mankind than medicine. Quackery is a thing universal, and universally successful. In this case it becomes literally true that no imposition is too great for the credulity of men. Henry David Thoreau