The dilemma of modern medicine, and the underlying central flaw in medical education and, most of all, in the training of interns, is the irresistible drive to do something, anything. It is expected by patients and too often agreed to by their doctors, in the face of ignorance.

I do not practice clinical medicine and hence do not treat individual patients. My career is in medical science.

Medical knowledge and technical savvy are biodegradable. The sort of medicine that was practiced in Boston or New York or Atlanta fifty years ago would be as strange to a medical student or intern today as the ceremonial dance of a !Kung San tribe would seem to a rock festival audience in Hackensack.

I have written two medical novels. I have never studied medicine, never seen an operation.

I completed medical school at Loma Linda University School of Medicine in 1984.

That's the thing. in medicine, you're used to saying there's a problem within the person, and saying there's a problem within the culture, that's not a medical answer. Medicine has to look in one direction, so there's only one type of answer that they can find.

My diagnosis had been discussed in almost every major medical journal, including the 'New England Journal of Medicine,' and 'The New York Times.'

We have the sense that medical students come to medicine with a great capacity to understand the suffering of patients. And then by the end of the third year they completely lose that ability, partly because we teach them the specialized language of medicine.

Just the actual physical ability to hold four instruments simultaneously and do some of the things that Vivien was able to do is mind blowing to any surgeon. He never went to medical school and he became one of the great teachers of medicine himself, people are just amazed.

I think the media can be a very positive influence by essentially holding people to task about the importance of high quality medical care. And when the media is scrutinizing you, then I think that's a very good, positive thing for the field of medicine.

There's a classic medical aphorism: 'Listen to the patient; they're telling you the diagnosis.' Actually, a lot of patients are just telling you a lot of rubbish, and you have to stop them and ask the pertinent questions. But, yes, in both drama and medicine, isolated facts can accumulate to create the narrative.

A lot of psychological principles and even medical principles, you see them coming around to what the Bible said hundreds of years ago: a merry heart is good like a medicine.

We need to start training more primary health providers and fewer specialists. We will never be able to control health care costs unless we challenge the over-emphasis on medical research, specialists and technology and put more emphasis on delivering good, everyday basic medicine to those who now have none.

There are three subjects on which the knowledge of the medical profession in general is woefully weak; they are manners, morals, and medicine.

Developments in medical technology have long been confined to procedural or pharmaceutical advances, while neglecting a most basic and essential component of medicine: patient information management.

Medicine sometimes snatches away health, sometimes gives it.

The rich man's dog gets more in the way of vaccination, medicine and medical care than do the workers upon whom the rich man's wealth is built.

I'm by no means condemning prescription medicine for mental health. I've seen it save a lot of people's lives.

The art of medicine was to be properly learned only from its practice and its exercise.

For many people, managing pain involves using prescription medicine in combination with complementary techniques like physical therapy, acupuncture, yoga and massage. I appreciate this because I truly believe medical care should address the person as a whole - their mind, body, and spirit.

Medicine is my lawful wife and literature my mistress; when I get tired of one, I spend the night with the other.

The physicians of one class feel the patients and go away, merely prescribing medicine. As they leave the room they simply ask the patient to take the medicine. They are the poorest class of physicians.

Through Love all that is bitter will be sweet, Through Love all that is copper will be gold, Through Love all dregs will become wine, through Love all pain will turn to medicine.

Americans, like many citizens of rich countries, take for granted the legal and regulatory system, the public schools, health care and social security for the elderly, roads, defense and diplomacy, and heavy investments by the state in research, particularly in medicine.