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Medicine Quotes

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Medicine Quotes

“THE MAXIMS OF MEDICINE Before you examine the body of a patient, Be patient to learn his story. For once you learn his story, You will also come to know His body. Before you diagnose any sickness, Make sure there is no sickness in the mind or heart. For the emotions in a man’s moon or sun, Can point to the sickness in Any one of his other parts. Before you treat a man with a condition, Know that not all cures can heal all people. For the chemistry that works on one patient, May not work for the next, Because even medicine has its own Conditions. Before asserting a prognosis on any patient, Always be objective and never subjective. For telling a man that he will win the treasure of life, But then later discovering that he will lose, Will harm him more than by telling him That he may lose, But then he wins. THE MAXIMS OF MEDICINE by Suzy Kassem”

“All worries are less with wine.”

“Love is a chemical reaction, But it cannot be fully understood or defined by science. And though a body cannot exist without a soul, It too cannot be fully understood or defined by science. Love is the most powerful form of energy, But science cannot decipher its elements. Yet the best cure for a sick soul is love, But even the most advanced physician Cannot prescribe it as medicine. INCOMPLETE SCIENCE by Suzy Kassem”

“Medicine rests upon four pillars—philosophy, astronomy, alchemy, and ethics. The first pillar is the philosophical knowledge of earth and water; the second, astronomy, supplies its full understanding of that which is of fiery and airy nature; the third is an adequate explanation of the properties of all the four elements—that is to say, of the whole cosmos—and an introduction into the art of their transformations; and finally, the fourth shows the physician those virtues which must stay with him up until his death, and it should support and complete the three other pillars.”

“So, if you're a doctor, how can you recognize that you're having a feeling? Some tips from Dr. Zinn: Most emotions have physical counterparts. Anxiety may be associated with a tightness of the abdomen or excessive diaphoresis; anger may be manifested by a generalized muscle tightness or a clenching of the jaw; sexual arousal may be noted by a tingling of the loins or piloerection; and sadness may be felt by conjunctival injection or heaviness of the chest.”

“The disease of the soul is both more common and more deadly than the disease of the body. Just as medicine is the art devoted to healing the body, so philosophy is the art devoted to healing the soul, curing it of improper emotions, false beliefs, and faulty judgments, which are the causes of so much hardship and handicap. To heal the body one turns to the practitioner of the art of healing the body, but to heal the soul there is no doctor to turn to, and each of us is left to become that doctor unto himself. Yet, this need not stop us from exhorting others to imitate us in the godly art, in the forlorn hope that they might transform themselves into better citizens for Athens and better companions for us.”

“If your leg is in a cast, it's really dumb to sit in front of your computer doing unnecessary stuff with it hanging down. Your leg will swell and heal slower, if at all. When you go to your doctor, he/she will give you one of those "you're really dumb and self destructive" looks. Also, "Why didn't you follow my orders and rest?" Your doctor will be right, and so will mine at my next office visit. Elevate, folk! Elevate your mind, your soul, and your leg, in the order needed!”

“Применение противозачаточных средств иногда критикуют как «противоестественное». Да, это так — очень противоестественное. Беда в том, что противоестественно и всеобщее благосостояние. Я думаю, что большинство из нас считает всеобщее благосостояние в высшей степени желательным. Невозможно, однако, добиться противоестественного всеобщего благосостояния, если не пойти при этом также на противоестественную регуляцию рождаемости, так как это приведет к еще большим невзгодам, чем существующие в природе.”

“I am leery of suggesting the idea that endings are controllable. No one ever really has control. Physics and biology and accident ultimately have their way in our lives. But the point is that we are not helpless either. Courage is the strength to recognize both realities. We have room to act, to shape our stories, though as time goes on it is within narrower and narrower confines. A few conclusions become clear when we understand this: that our most cruel failure in how we treat the sick and the aged is the failure to recognize that they have priorities beyond merely being safe and living longer; that the chance to shape one’s story is essential to sustaining meaning in life; that we have the opportunity to refashion our institutions, our culture, and our conversations in ways that transform the possibilities for the last chapters of everyone’s lives.”

“I think of Gould and his essay every time I have a patient with a terminal illness. There is almost always a long tail of possibility, however thin. What’s wrong with looking for it? Nothing, it seems to me, unless it means we have failed to prepare for the outcome that’s vastly more probable. The trouble is that we’ve built our medical system and culture around the long tail. We’ve created a multitrillion-dollar edifice for dispensing the medical equivalent of lottery tickets—and have only the rudiments of a system to prepare patients for the near certainty that those tickets will not win. Hope is not a plan, but hope is our plan.”

“I can't see the logic in medicating a grieving person like there was something wrong with her, and yet it happens all the time... you go to the doctor with symptoms of profound grief and they push an antidepressant at you. We need to walk through our grief, not medicate it and shove it under the carpet like it wasn't there.”

“Many a death was precipitated by the food, the job, or the medication whose main function was to postpone it.”

“I submit a body of facts which cannot be invalidated. My opinions may be doubted, denied, or approved, according as they conflict or agree with the opinions of each individual who may read them; but their worth will be best determined by the foundation on which they rest—the incontrovertible facts.”

“John’s adolescence was marked by loss. When he was thirteen his father died, swiftly followed by his two sisters. Shortly after he turned seventeen his eldest brother, James, whose progress through his chosen medics, career had taken him to London, became unable to work due to ill health and returned to the farm, lying for days on one of the beds that pulled out from the walls of the two-roomed cottage like drawers, coughing himself to death at least while John watched or was nearby; and I find it hard to imagine, now, when death is largely hedged about with treatment plans, when it does not often come senseless out of nowhere, but can be postposted, or if not, then at least explained, what grief must have been like when that boundary was a curtain you could put your hand through. It is easy to think that when death could be so quickly turned to, a matter of mistral and all families counted lost children in their numbers, that loss must have been a blunter thing- that having so much practice, they must have been better at it, or inoculated, that it cannot have been for them such devastation, this laying waste- as the birth of a tenth child might be of less account in a busy week than the loss of a pair of, so that the date of it was not looked for until later, when it was found to have been forgotten. It is easy to think that in an age without anaesthetics, when legs might be hacked off on kitchen tables, teeth pulled sigh pliers taking gobbets of jaw and gun away with the , that pain must have been somehow a less precise, less devastating thing, the alternative being unthinkable- that it was just the same but persisting, could only be endured, to universal to allow concession; and so John Hunter watched the bodies of those he loved carried out of the tiny farmhouse one by one, making their last journey to the church, and afterwards he went about the business of his day, he went to school or to the fields, and then at last, summoned by William, the sole surviving brother he barely remembered, he went to London and, did not return.”

“I am a cuddly atheist... I am against creationism being taught in schools because there is empirical evidence that it is a silly notion... I am passionately concerned about the rise in pseudo-science; in beliefs in alternative medicine; in creationism. The idea that somehow it is based on logic, on rational arguments, but it's not. It doesn't stand up to empirical evidence. In the same way in medicine, alternative medicines like homeopathy or new age therapies – reiki healing – a lot of people buy into it and it grates against my rationalist view of the world. There is no evidence for it. It is deceitful. It is insidious. I feel passionately about living in a society with a rationalist view of the world. I will be vocal on issues where religion impacts on people's lives in a way that I don't agree with – if, for instance, in faith schools some of the teaching of religion suggests the children might have homophobic views or views that are intolerant towards other belief systems... I am totally against, for example, bishops in the House of Lords. Why should someone of a particular religious faith have some preferential treatment over anyone else? This notion that the Church of England is the official religion of the country is utterly outmoded now.”

“The immense ignorance surrounding heart disease in women is one of the better-known scandals to come out of medical history, an egregious example of entrenched bias within not just circulatory medicine but science altogether, one whose influence is plainly visible today.”

“Hands speak more intimately than words," writes author Aundre Aciman. He's discussing the deaf here, specifically his mother, but I immediately think about healthcare, about perinatal care specifically. Touch is intimate. It can excite, comfort, heal. It should also be welcome. [...] Entry to a person's body should occur by invitation only, never amid confusion, never by coercion.”

“Hands speak more intimately than words," writes author André Aciman. He's discussing the deaf here, specifically his mother, but I immediately think about healthcare, about perinatal care specifically. Touch is intimate. It can excite, comfort, heal. It should also be welcome. [...] Entry to a person's body should occur by invitation only, never amid confusion, never by coercion.”

“...when I became pregnant with my third kid, these seemingly small moments of nonconsent replayed in my mind—the obligatory pelvic exam, the needle in my arm, the bruise like rotten fruit, the lithotomy position someone put me in both times. Sure, both births were beautiful, vaginal, natural—tick, tick, tick on the boxes of imaginary birth "success." But these were the moments I couldn't shake, that wedged themselves in and made me angry, ill.”

“Globally, most women have babies, and it seems that a high percentage of them are still suffering postpartum injuries long after their births. Urine leakage starts with the pelvic floor. One doctor told me that families commonly give up on caring for their aging loved ones when they lose bladder control. Kids don't want to change their parents' diapers. Urinary incontinence is a leading cause of nursing home admissions for women. This means that whether or not you can live your final days independently may come down to what's unresolved from giving birth, in a part of your body you don't really understand or might not even know is there. The healthcare system isn't just failing postpartum women. It's failing women of all ages for their entire lives.”

“Modern obstetrics still preaches that birth is a battle between mother and child and worries that babies grow too large to safely exit the bodies that built them. However, obstetricians cannot accurately discern a baby's size in utero toward the end of a pregnancy, according to recent studies. When ultrasounds predict big babies, they are wrong about half the time, far too frequently to be relied upon. This fact has not stopped doctors from inducing or scheduling surgery for pregnant people, essentially claiming they cannot birth their own babies, that their babies won't fit through the birth canal before they have even tried. Despite obstetric alarm sounding, what we know hardly suggests that women routinely build babies too large to birth.”

“....birthing a larger-than-average baby is far less risky to a pregnant person than her doctor thinking she is carrying one. One study compared women whose doctors suspected they were carrying large babies (babies bigger than eight pounds, thirteen ounces) with women who gave birth to large babies that doctors hadn't anticipated. The group predicted to have big babies was three times more likely to be induced, more than three times as likely to have C-sections, and four times as likely to have birth complications. Far more problematic than a big baby is the need to intervene.”

“Squishy, stretchy babies adapted big brains but also soft, mobile heads to fit through their mothers' birth canals. Mom's hormones encourage pliability in the ligaments that hold her bones together—pelvises widen during the fertile years and, of course, during pregnancy and birth. [...] These adaptations seem to disprove the argument that birthing pelvises are the wrong size and shape to birth, that they lack compatibility with their babies. Labor is like two bodies dancing, not fighting.”

“Ultimately, why we birth the way we do transcends the boundaries of our bones. Physiologic labor is a complex process involving, yes, bones, but also tissues, muscles, organs, cells, hormones, an exchange of signals between two people, mechanical changes, emotions. Bones are easier to see and study, so bone shape and size are what obstetricians, historians, and anthropologists have historically prioritized.”

“Systems other than science that can contribute to healing are worthy of respectful exploration, especially those that provide connectedness - connectedness between the healer and the healed, connectedness with compassion and empathy, connectedness with one's own feelings, and connectedness with spirituality, with the universe and the higher powers. The psychological issue of connectedness has been missing from healing in recent years. This gap between scientific objectivity and connectedness is beginning to narrow, even within the boundaries of American Medical Association (AMA) medicine.”