A disease, however much its cause may be adverse to the human body, is nothing more than an effort of Nature, who strives with might and main to restore the health of the patient by the elimination of the morbifdc humor.
A man is as old as his arteries.
Among the remedies which it has pleased Almighty God to give to man to relieve his sufferings, none is so universal and so efficacious as opium.
As no man can say who it was that first invented the use of clothes and houses against the inclemency of the weather, so also can no investigator point out the origin of Medicine - mysterious as the source of the Nile.
For humble individuals like myself, there is one poor comfort, which is this, viz. that gout, unlike any other disease, kills more rich men than poor, more wise men than simple.
Gout attacks such old men as, after passing the best part of their life in ease and comfort, indulging freely in high living, wine and other generous drinks, at length, from inactivity, the usual attendant of advanced life, have left off altogether the bodily exercises of their youth.
Gout produces calculus in the kidney... the patient has frequently to entertain the painful speculation as to whether gout or stone be the worst disease. Sometimes the stone, on passing, kills the patient, without waiting for the gout.
Great kings, emperors, generals, admirals, and philosophers have all died of gout.
Hereby Nature shows her impartiality: since those whom she favors in one way she afflicts in another - a mixture of good and evil pre-eminently adapted to our frail mortality.
How can I make a patient vomit, and how can I purge or sweat him, are matters which a druggist's shopboy can tell me offhand.
I confidently affirm that the greater part of those who are supposed to have died of gout, have died of the medicine rather than the disease - a statement in which I am supported by observation.
I watched what method Nature might take, with intention of subduing the symptom by treading in her footsteps.
In writing the history of a disease, every philosophical hypothesis whatsoever, that has previously occupied the mind of the author, should lie in abeyance.
It is my nature to thin where others read.
Lastly, he must remember that he himself hath no exemption from the common lot, but that he is bound by the same laws of mortality, and liable to the same ailments and afflictions with his fellows.
Nothing in medicine is so insignificant as to merit attention.
Pain, lamenes, and the long list of enumerated symptoms are not all. Gout produces calcules in the kidney... the patient has frequently to whether gout or stone be the worst disease.
Read Don Quixote; it is a very good book; I still read it frequently.
Secondly, that such skill and science as, by the blessing of Almighty God, he has attained, are to be specially directed toward the honour of his Maker, and the welfare of his fellow-creatures; since it is a base thing for the great gifts of Heaven to become the servants of avarice and ambition.
The arrival of a good clown exercises a more beneficial influence upon the health of a town than of twenty asses laden with drugs.
The art of medicine was to be properly learned only from its practice and its exercise.
The generality have considered that disease is but a confused and disordered effort in Nature, thrown down from her proper state, and defending herself in vain.
The more closely I have thought upon gout, the more I have referred it to indigestion, or to the impaired concoctation of matters, both in the parts and the juices of the body.
We are overwhelmed as it is, with an infinite abundance of vaunted medicaments, and here they add a new one.
We may ascertain the worth of the human race, since for its sake God's Only-begotten Son became man, and thereby ennobled the nature that he took upon him.
Whoever takes up medicine should aeriously consider the following points: firstly, that he must one day render to the Supreme Judge an account of the lives of those sick men who have been entrusted to his care.
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