“Cure the disease and kill the patient.”
Francis Bacon book Essays
Of Friendship
Essays (1625)
Variant: Cure the disease, and kill the patient.
“The diseases which are hard to cure in neighborhoods… are catarrh, hoarseness, coughs, pleurisy, consumption, spitting of blood, and all others that are cured not by lowering the system but by building it up. They are hard to cure, first, because they are originally due to chills; secondly, because the patient's system being already exhausted by disease, the air there, which is in constant agitation owing to winds and therefore deteriorated, takes all the sap of life out of their diseased bodies and leaves them more meager every day. On the other hand, a mild, thick air, without drafts and not constantly blowing back and forth, builds up their frames by its unwavering steadiness, and so strengthens and restores people who are afflicted with these diseases.”
— Vitruvius, book De architectura
Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book I, Chapter VI, Sec. 3
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Vitruvius203
Roman writer, architect and engineer -80–-15 BCRelated quotes
“We all labour against our own cure, for death is the cure of all diseases.”
Thomas Browne book Religio Medici
Section 9
Religio Medici (1643), Part II
Hippocrates (-460–-370 BC) ancient Greek physician
7:87
Variant translation: What cannot be cured by medicaments is cured by the knife, what the knife cannot cure is cured with the searing iron, and whatever this cannot cure must be considered incurable.
Aphorisms
“The art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.”
Voltaire (1694–1778) French writer, historian, and philosopher
According to The Veterinarian (Monthly Journal of Veterinary Science) for 1851, edited by Mr. Percivall, this is Ben Jonson's "satirical definition of physic".
Misattributed
“Presidential ambition is a disease which can only be cured by embalming fluid.”
Morris Udall (1922–1998) American politician
Quoting from Estes Kefauver
Misattributed
“For a desperate disease a desperate cure.”
Michel De Montaigne book Essays
Book II, Ch. 3. The Custom of the Isle of Cea
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“Stop war? Impossible! There is no cure for the world's disease.”
Henri Barbusse book Under Fire
Under Fire (1916), Ch. 1 - The Vision
“Government is a disease masquerading as its own cure.”
Robert LeFevre (1911–1986) American libertarian businessman
Financial Sense http://www.financialsense.com/fsu/editorials/steer/2007/0805.html Also quoted in “Covert Operation”, Jane Mayer, The New Yorker, (Aug. 30, 2010)