America's health care system is neither healthy, caring, nor a system.

America's health care system is neither healthy, caring, nor a system.

I bought an unction of a mountebank,
So mortal that, but dip a knife in it,
Where read more

I bought an unction of a mountebank,
So mortal that, but dip a knife in it,
Where it draws blood so cataplasm so rare,
Collected from all simples that have virtue
Under the moon, can save the thing from death
That is but scratched withal. I'll touch my point
With this contagion, that, if I gall him slightly,
It may be death.

A doctor's reputation is made by the number of eminent men who die under his care.

A doctor's reputation is made by the number of eminent men who die under his care.

Medicine makes people ill, mathematics makes them sad, and theology makes them sinful

Medicine makes people ill, mathematics makes them sad, and theology makes them sinful

Learn from the beasts the physic of the field.

Learn from the beasts the physic of the field.

But nothing is more estimable than a physician who, having
studied nature from his youth, knows the properties of read more

But nothing is more estimable than a physician who, having
studied nature from his youth, knows the properties of the human
body, the diseases which assail it, the remedies which will
benefit it, exercises his art with caution, and pays equal
attention to the rich and the poor.
- Voltaire (Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire),

One doctor, singly like the sculler plies,
The patient struggles, and by inches dies;
But two physicians, read more

One doctor, singly like the sculler plies,
The patient struggles, and by inches dies;
But two physicians, like a pair of oars,
Waft him right swiftly to the Stygian shores.

How the Doctor's brow should smile,
Crown'd with wreaths of camomile.

How the Doctor's brow should smile,
Crown'd with wreaths of camomile.

We have to ask ourselves whether medicine is to remain a humanitarian and respected profession or a new but depersonalized read more

We have to ask ourselves whether medicine is to remain a humanitarian and respected profession or a new but depersonalized science in the service of prolonging life rather than diminishing human suffering.