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Table of Contents
Think
Assess
Patient: Autonomy
Practitioner: Beneficence & Nonmaleficence
Public Policy: Justice
Conclude
Appendix ? - Aphorisms
60 Aphorisms for Medical Practitioners
[D] Wherever the art of medicine is loved, there is also a love of humanity.
~ Hippocrates
[E] As a member of the medical profession, the health and well-being of my patient will be my first consideration.
~ Declaration of Geneva
[1:1] It is no part of a medical practitioner’s business to use manipulation or compulsion with patients.
~ Aristotle
[2:1] Make a habit of two things: to help, or at least to do no harm.
~ Hippocrates
[3:1] Medicine is not merely a science but an art. The character of the medical practitioner may act more powerfully upon the patient than the drugs employed.
~ Paracelsus
[4:1] The medical practitioner should not treat the disease but the patient who is suffering from it.
~ Maimonides
[5:1] Physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia have been profound ethical issues confronting doctors since the birth of Western medicine, more than 2,000 years ago.
~ Ezekiel Emanuel
[6:1] In nothing do medical practitioners more nearly approach the gods than in giving health.
~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
[7:1] A medical practitioner who is a lover of wisdom is equal to a god.
~ Hippocrates
[8:1] I will respect the secrets that are confided in me, even after the patient has died.
~ Declaration of Geneva
[9:1] But tell me, is this medical practitioner a moneymaker, an earner of fees, or a healer of the sick?
~ Plato
[10] The best medical practitioner is the one who is the most ingenious inspirer of hope.
~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge
[11:1] A medical practitioner is obligated to consider more than a diseased organ, more even than the whole patient - the medical practitioner must view the patient within the patient’s world.
~ Harvey Cushing
[12:1] Medical practitioners are, in general, the most amiable companions and the best friends, as well as the most learned individuals I know.
~ Alexander Pope
[13:1] Good physicians [medical practitioners] are rarely dispassionate. They agonize and self-doubt over patients.
~ Siddhartha Mukherjee (The Emperor of All Maladies)
[14:1] The best medical practitioner is the one who can distinguish the possible from the impossible.
~ Herophilos
[15:1] The best medical practitioner is also a philosopher.
~ Galen
[16:1] A careful medical practitioner … before they attempt to administer a remedy to their patient, the medical practitioner must investigate the patient’s malady they wish to cure, the patient’s habits when in health, and the patient’s physical constitution.
~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
[17:1] Cure sometimes, treat often, and comfort always.
~ Hippocrates
[18:1] Is it not also true that no medical practitioner considers or enjoins what is for the medical practitioner’s good, but that all seek the best interests of their patients? Medical practitioner are rulers of bodies, not moneymakers.
~ Plato
[19:1] What sense would it make, or what would it benefit a medical practitioner if they discover the origin of diseases but could not cure or alleviate them?
~ Paracelsus
[20:1] Prevention of disease must become the goal of every medical practitioner.
~ Henry E. Sigerist
[21:1] Only those who regard healing as the ultimate goal of their efforts can, therefore, be designated as medical practitioners.
~ Rudolf Virchow
[22:1] The medical practitioner who cures a disease may be the most skillful, but the medical practitioner that prevents disease is the safest.
~ Thomas Fuller
[23:1] The medical practitioner’s duty is not to stave off death or return patients to their old lives, but to take into our arms a patient and family whose lives have disintegrated and work until they can stand back up and make sense of their existence.
~ Paul Kalanithi (When Breath Becomes Air)
[24:1] As medical practitioners say … at the beginning of a malady, it is easy to cure but difficult to detect, but over time, not having been either detected or treated in the beginning, it becomes easy to detect but difficult to cure.
~ Niccolo Machiavelli
[25:1] The physician [practitioner] who knows only medicine knows not even medicine.
~ Mark Twain
[26:1] The aim of medicine is to prevent disease and prolong life; the ideal of medicine is to eliminate the need for a physician [practitioner].
~ William James Mayo
[27:1] In order to be a good medical practitioner, they must also have a good character, that is to say, whatever weaknesses and foibles they may have, the medical practitioner must love their fellow human beings in the concrete and desire their fellow human beings good before their own.
~ W. H. Auden
[28:1] The doctor of the future will be a teacher as well as a medical practitioner. The doctor’s real job will be to teach people how to be healthy.
~ D. C. Jarvis
[29:1] When a physician [practitioner] does go wrong, they are the best of criminals. The physician [practitioner] has nerve and knowledge.
~ Arthur Conan Doyle
[30:1] The practice of medicine is an art, not a trade; a calling, not a business; a calling in which your heart will be exercised equally with your head. Often the best part of your work will have nothing to do with potions and powders, but with the exercise of an influence of the strong upon the weak, of the righteous upon the wicked, of the wise upon the foolish.
~ Sir William Osler
[31:1] The good medical practitioner treats the disease; the great medical practitioner treats the patient who has the disease.
~ Sir William Osler
[32:1] There is only one cardinal rule: One must always listen to the patient.
~ Oliver Sacks
[33:1] Life is short, and the art of medicine long; the occasion fleeting; experience fallacious, and judgment difficult. The medical practitioner must be prepared to do what is right and help the patient, attendants, and externals work together.
~ Hippocrates
[34:1] The medical practitioner should not treat the disease but the patient who is suffering from it.
~ Moses Maimonides
[35:1] How people die remains in the memory of those who live.
~ Cicely Saunders
[36:1] The art of medicine has three factors, the disease, the patient, the medical practitioner. The medical practitioner is the servant of the art. The patient must participate with the medical practitioner in combatting the disease.
~ Hippocrates
[37:1] Given one well-trained medical practitioner of the highest type, they will do better work for a thousand people than ten specialists.
~ William James Mayo
[38:1] Trials are medicines which our gracious and wise medical practitioner prescribes because patient’s need them, and the medical practitioner proportions the frequency and weight of them to what the case requires. Let us trust the medical practitioner’s skill and thank the medical practitioner for their prescription.
~ Isaac Newton
[39:1] By examining the patient’s tongue, medical practitioners find out the diseases of the body and philosophers the diseases of the mind.
~ Justin Martyr
[40:1] To the extent that they are a medical practitioner, the medical practitioner considers only the patient’s best interests in what they prescribe, not the medical practitioner’s good.
~ Plato
[41:1] Congratulate the medical practitioner on their choice of calling, which offers a combination of intellectual and moral interests found in no other profession.
~ Sir William Osler
[42:1] It may seem a strange principle to enunciate as the very first requirement in a hospital that it should do the sick no harm.
~ Florence Nightingale
[43:1] Tis not always in a medical practitioner’s power to cure the sick; at times, the disease is more potent than trained art.
~ Ovid
[44:1] The good medical practitioner treats the disease; the great medical practitioner treats the patient who has the disease.
~ Sir William Osler
[45:1] Every medical practitioner must be rich in knowledge, not only of that written in books; patients should be the book. Patients will never mislead the medical practitioner.
~ Paracelsus
[46:1] A medical practitioner who treats oneself has a fool for a patient.
~ Sir William Osler
[47:1] [The] medical practitioner, who, having just forbidden his cardiac patient indulgence in tobacco, alcohol and amorous intimacies, was asked by the victim, ’Tell me, doctor, if I give these things up, will I live longer?’ to which his medical practitioner replied with charm and candor, ’No, but it’ll seem longer.’
~ Bernard Meyer
[48:1] A medical practitioner is an unfortunate person who is required to perform a miracle, namely to reconcile health with intemperance.
~ Voltaire
[49:1] Be kind. Every person is fighting a difficult battle.
~ Plato
[50:1] The medical practitioner treats, but nature heals.
~ Hippocrates
[51:1] The medical practitioner’s highest calling, the only calling, is to make sick people healthy — to heal, as it is termed.
~ Samuel Hahnemann
[52:1] A fool contributes nothing worth hearing and takes offense at everything.
~ Aristotle
[53:1] The young medical practitioner starts life with 20 drugs for each disease, and the old medical practitioner ends life with one drug for 20 diseases.
~ Sir William Osler
[54:1] Excellence is never an accident. It always results from high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives — choice, not chance, determines destiny.
~ Aristotle
[55:1] A person will not address a medical practitioner as a nobody, nor a magistrate as an every day individual. The medical practitioner has the power of skill, the magistrate the power of position.
~ Saint Basil
[56:1] Death is a friend that alone can bring the peace that treasures cannot purchase and remove the pain that medical practitioners cannot cure.
~ Mortimer Collins
[57:1] Any medical practitioner who advertises a positive cure for any disease, who issues nostrum testimonials, who sells their services to a secret remedy, or who diagnoses and treats by mail patients that they have never seen, is a quack.
~ Samuel Hopkins Adams
[58:1] [As a medical practitioner] I will follow that system of regimen which, according to my ability and judgment, I consider for the benefit of my patients, and abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous.
~ Hippocrates
[59:1] Patients pay the medical practitioner for their trouble; for the medical practitioner’s kindness, patients remain in debt.
~ Seneca
[60:1] Conscientious and careful medical practitioners assign disease causes to natural laws, while the best scientists go back to medicine for their first principles.
~ Aristotle
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