Medicine

• "Do not forget: in medicine, there are more important things than life and death: dollars and cents." Gerhard Kocher
• "Medicine knows no limits, especially not its own." Gerhard Kocher
• "Mankind has survived all catastrophes. It will also survive moderne medicine." Gerhard Kocher

Historical quotes

• "The unbiased opinion of most medical men of sound judgment and long experience...[holds that] the amount of death and disaster in the world would be less, if all disease were left to itself."
  • Harvard professor Jacob Bigelow, 1835.

• "I firmly believe that if the whole material medica, as now used, could be sunk to the bottom of the sea, it would be better for mankind-and all the worse for the fishes."
  • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., 19th century physician

• "The college-birs are three
  Law, Physic and Divinity
  And while these three remain combined,
  They keep the world oppressed and blind...
  Now is the time to be set free,
  From priests' and Doctors' slavery.
  • 19th century rhyme associated with the Thomsonian movement

• "The ignorance and general incompetency of the average graduate of the American medical Schools, at the time when he receives the degree which turns him loose upon the community, is something horrible to contemplate."
  • Charles Eliot, President of Harvard University, 1869
    • In response to this call for reform, Harvard Professor of Surgery Harold Bigelow replied "He actually proposes to have written examinations for the degree of doctor of medicine. I had to tell him that he knew nothing about the quality of Harvard medical students. More than half of them can barely write. Of course they can't pass written examinations...No medical school has thought it proper to risk large existing classes and larger receipts by introducing more rigorous standards."

• "We should not encourage the medical student to while away his time in the labyrinths of Chemistry and Physiology."
  • Harvard Medical School professor, 1871.