The Other World (1657)
Context: The most competent physician of our world advises the patient to listen to an ignorant doctor who the patient thinks is very competent rather than to a competent doctor who the patient thinks is ignorant. He reason is that our imagination works for our good health, and as long as it is supplemented by remedies, it is capable of healing us. But the most powerful remedies are too weak when the imagination does not apply them.
Source: The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor
On doctors who ask patients to avoid Ayurveda, as quoted in " Doctors prescribing non-ayurvedic medicines are anti-national http://m.timesofindia.com/city/kolhapur/Doctors-prescribing-non-ayurvedic-medicines-are-anti-national/articleshow/52058067.cms", The Times of India (30 April 2016)
Larry King Live interview (2010)
Context: The country can't get well if the people are sick. And the people are sick. Now, I know Obama's not been the best president and the Democrats are not the best politicians, but you know what? We elected him just two years ago to fix this massive bunch of problems we have. And because he didn't do it by football season, we are ready to throw him out on the street and bring back the guys who messed it up just two years ago. That's a little too impatient. Yes, when he got the patient, the patient was bleeding to death — he got the patient to stop bleeding. But, OK, the patient is not up and back at the office quite yet. It's no reason to throw the doctor out and get back the doctor who was using leaches.
King against Dr. Burrel (1699), 5 Mod. 432.
“A physician who treats himself has a fool for a patient.”
Source: Sir William Osler : Aphorisms (1961), Ch. 1.
“Each patient carries his own doctor inside him.”
Source: Anatomy of an Illness
“4368. That Patient is not like to recover, that makes the Doctor his Heir.”
Compare Poor Richard's Almanack (1733) : He's a Fool that makes his Doctor his Heir.
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)
“The physician should not treat the disease but the patient who is suffering from it”
Attempting to quell rumors of Soviet leader Chernenko's ill health, as quoted in "Visiting Soviet Doctor Changes His Statement" in The New York Times (10 February 1985) http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F70F14F63C5D0C738DDDAB0894DD484D81.
“Doctors put a wall up between themselves and their patients; nurses broke it down.”
Source: Nineteen Minutes
