I find that most men would rather have their bellies opened for five hundred dollars than have a tooth pulled for five.

In the sick room, ten cents’ worth of human understanding equals ten dollars’ worth of medical science.

First need in the reform of hospital management? That’s easy! The death of all dietitians, and the resurrection of a French chef.

I find that most men would rather have their bellies opened for five hundred dollars than have a tooth pulled for five.

Diagnosis is not the end, but the beginning of practice.

The practice of medicine is a thinker’s art the practice of surgery a plumber’s.

A good teacher must know the rules; a good pupil, the exceptions.

A doctor must work eighteen hours a day and seven days a week. If you cannot console yourself to this, get out of the profession.

None of the great discoveries was made by a ‘specialist’ or a ‘researcher’.

There is only one reason why men become addicted to drugs – they are weak men. Only strong men are cured, and they cure themselves.

Don’t despise empiric truth. Lots of things work in practice for which the laboratory has never found proof.

When a man lacks mental balance in pneumonia he is said to be delirious. When he lacks mental balance without the pneumonia, he is pronounced insane by all smart doctors.

We humans are the greatest of earth’s parasites.

Facts are not science – as the dictionary is not literature.

Research has been called good business, a necessity, a gamble, a game. It is none of these – it’s a state of mind.

Whenever ideas fail, men invent words.

Don’t confuse hypothesis and theory. The former is a possible explanation; the latter, the correct one. The establishment of theory is the very purpose of science.

Here’s good advice for practice: go into partnership with nature; she does more than half the work and asks none of the fee.

In diagnosis think of the easy first.

The great doctors all got their education off dirt pavements and poverty – not marble floors and foundations.

You must learn to talk clearly. The jargon of scientific terminology which rolls off your tongues is mental garbage.

A man who cannot work without his hypodermic needle is a poor doctor. The amount of narcotic you use is inversely proportional to your skill.