Even as a Surgeon, minding off to cut
Some cureless limb, before in use he put
His read more

Even as a Surgeon, minding off to cut
Some cureless limb, before in use he put
His violent Engins on the vicious member,
Bringeth his Patient in a senseless slumber,
And grief-less then (guided by use and art),
To save the whole, sawes off th' infected part.
- Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas,

It is infinitely better to transplant a heart than to bury it so it can be devoured by worms.

It is infinitely better to transplant a heart than to bury it so it can be devoured by worms.

Who shall decide when doctors disagree,
And soundest casuists doubt, like you and me?

Who shall decide when doctors disagree,
And soundest casuists doubt, like you and me?

Better to hunt in fields for health unbought,
Than fee the doctor for a nauseous draught.
The read more

Better to hunt in fields for health unbought,
Than fee the doctor for a nauseous draught.
The wise for cure on exercise depend;
God never made his work for man to mend.

This is the way that physicians mend or end us,
Secundum artem: but although we sneer
In read more

This is the way that physicians mend or end us,
Secundum artem: but although we sneer
In health--when ill, we call them to attend us,
Without the least propensity to jeer.

A physician is nothing but a consoler of the mind.
[Lat., Medicus nihil aliud est quam animi consolatio.]

A physician is nothing but a consoler of the mind.
[Lat., Medicus nihil aliud est quam animi consolatio.]

God who sends the wound sends the medicine.
[Sp., Dios que da la llaga, da la medicina.]

God who sends the wound sends the medicine.
[Sp., Dios que da la llaga, da la medicina.]

(Macbeth:) How does your patient, doctor?
(Doctor:) Not so sick, my lord,
As she is troubled with read more

(Macbeth:) How does your patient, doctor?
(Doctor:) Not so sick, my lord,
As she is troubled with thick-coming fancies
That keep her from her rest.
(Macbeth:) Cure her of that!
Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,
Pluck from the memory of a rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain,
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuffed bosom of the perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart?
(Doctor:) Therein the patient
Must minister to himself.
(Macbeth:) Throw physic to the dogs, I'll none of it!

You tell your doctor, that y' are ill
And what does he, but write a bill,
Of read more

You tell your doctor, that y' are ill
And what does he, but write a bill,
Of which you need not read one letter,
The worse the scrawl, the dose the better.
For if you knew but what you take,
Though you recover, he must break.