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Martin H. Fischer
(10 Nov 1879 - 19 Jan 1962)
German-American physician and writer who is known for his many epigrams about the practice of medicine.
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Science Quotes by Martin H. Fischer (120 quotes)
A conclusion is the place where you got tired thinking.
— Martin H. Fischer
In Charlie Walker, My Few Wise Words of Wisdom (200), 151.
A doctor must work eighteen hours a day and seven days a week. If you cannot console yourself to this, get out of the profession
— Martin H. Fischer
Martin H. Fischer, Howard Fabing (ed.) and Ray Marr (ed.), Fischerisms (1944).
A doctor whose breath smells has no right to medical opinion.
— Martin H. Fischer
A good teacher must know the rules; a good pupil, the exceptions.
— Martin H. Fischer
Martin H. Fischer, Howard Fabing (ed.) and Ray Marr (ed.), Fischerisms (1944).
A laboratory is only a place where one may better set up and control conditions.
— Martin H. Fischer
Martin H. Fischer, Howard Fabing (ed.) and Ray Marr (ed.), Fischerisms (1944).
A living civilization creates; a dying, builds museums.
— Martin H. Fischer
A machine has value only as it produces more than it consumes—so check your value to the community.
— Martin H. Fischer
As given in M. P. Singh, Quote Unquote: A Handbook of Quotations (2005), 86. Webmaster has not yet found a more reliable source.
A man may be born a jackass; but it is his business if he makes himself a double one.
— Martin H. Fischer
A man who cannot work without his hypodermic needle is a poor doctor. The amount of narcotic you use is inversely proportional to your skill.
— Martin H. Fischer
Martin H. Fischer, Howard Fabing (ed.) and Ray Marr (ed.), Fischerisms (1944).
A nickel’s worth of goulash beats a five dollar can of vitamins.
— Martin H. Fischer
All the world is a laboratory to the inquiring mind.
— Martin H. Fischer
Martin H. Fischer, Howard Fabing (ed.) and Ray Marr (ed.), Fischerisms (1944).
An insane man is a sick man. Please don’t forget that, gentlemen.
— Martin H. Fischer
Martin H. Fischer, Howard Fabing (ed.) and Ray Marr (ed.), Fischerisms (1944).
Any man who does not make himself proficient in at least two languages other than his own is a fool.
— Martin H. Fischer
Martin H. Fischer, Howard Fabing (ed.) and Ray Marr (ed.), Fischerisms (1944).
Bacteria keeps us from heaven and puts us there.
— Martin H. Fischer
Diagnosis is not the end, but the beginning of practice.
— Martin H. Fischer
Martin H. Fischer, Howard Fabing (ed.) and Ray Marr (ed.), Fischerisms (1944).
Diets were invented of the church, the workhouse and the hospital. They were started for the punishment of the spirit and have ended in the punishment of the body.
— Martin H. Fischer
Martin H. Fischer, Howard Fabing (ed.) and Ray Marr (ed.), Fischerisms (1944).
Disease is somatic; the suffering from it, psychic.
— Martin H. Fischer
Don’t confuse hypothesis and theory. The former is a possible explanation; the latter, the correct one. The establishment of theory is the very purpose of science.
— Martin H. Fischer
Martin H. Fischer, Howard Fabing (ed.) and Ray Marr (ed.), Fischerisms (1944), 7.
Don’t despise empiric truth. Lots of things work in practice for which the laboratory has never found proof.
— Martin H. Fischer
Martin H. Fischer, Howard Fabing (ed.) and Ray Marr (ed.), Fischerisms (1944).
Don’t forget that the flavors of wine and cheese depend upon the types of infecting microorganisms.
— Martin H. Fischer
Education aims to give you a boost up the ladder of knowledge. Too often, it just gives you a cramp on one of its rungs.
— Martin H. Fischer
Education is the process of driving a set of prejudices down your throat.
— Martin H. Fischer
Education should be exercise; it has become massage.
— Martin H. Fischer
Every discovery in science is a tacit criticism of things as they are. That is why the wise man is invariably called a fool.
— Martin H. Fischer
Martin H. Fischer, Howard Fabing (ed.) and Ray Marr (ed.), Fischerisms (1944).
Expect an early death - it will keep you busier.
— Martin H. Fischer
Facts are not science—as the dictionary is not literature.
— Martin H. Fischer
Martin H. Fischer, Howard Fabing (ed.) and Ray Marr (ed.), Fischerisms (1944), 21.
First need in the reform of hospital management? That’s easy! The death of all dietitians, and the resurrection of a French chef.
— Martin H. Fischer
Martin H. Fischer, Howard Fabing (ed.) and Ray Marr (ed.), Fischerisms (1944).
Follow Descartes! Do not give up the religion of your youth until you get a better one.
— Martin H. Fischer
God’s interest in the human race is nowhere better evinced than in obstetrics.
— Martin H. Fischer
Half the modern drugs could well be thrown out the window except that the birds might eat them
— Martin H. Fischer
Martin H. Fischer, Howard Fabing (ed.) and Ray Marr (ed.), Fischerisms (1944).
Here’s good advice for practice: go into partnership with nature; she does more than half the work and asks none of the fee.
— Martin H. Fischer
Martin H. Fischer, Howard Fabing (ed.) and Ray Marr (ed.), Fischerisms (1944).
Hitler destroyed the German university with design; we destroyed ours without.
— Martin H. Fischer
Hormones, vitamines, stimulants and depressives are oils upon the creaky machinery of life. Principal item, however, is the machinery.
— Martin H. Fischer
I find four great classes of students: The dumb who stay dumb. The dumb who become wise. The wise who go dumb. The wise who remain wise.
— Martin H. Fischer
I find that most men would rather have their bellies opened for five hundred dollars than have a tooth pulled for five.
— Martin H. Fischer
Martin H. Fischer, Howard Fabing (ed.) and Ray Marr (ed.), Fischerisms (1944).
If you are physically sick, you can elicit the interest of a battery of physicians; but if you are mentally sick, you are lucky if the janitor comes around.
— Martin H. Fischer
Martin H. Fischer, Howard Fabing (ed.) and Ray Marr (ed.), Fischerisms (1944).
If you do not agree with the prevalent point of view, be ready to explain why.
— Martin H. Fischer
If you don’t know what’s meant by God, watch a forsythia branch or a lettuce leaf sprout.
— Martin H. Fischer
In diagnosis, think of the easy first.
— Martin H. Fischer
Martin H. Fischer, Howard Fabing (ed.) and Ray Marr (ed.), Fischerisms (1944).
In the end, poverty, putridity and pestilence; work, wealth and worry; health, happiness and hell, all simmer down into village problems.
— Martin H. Fischer
In the sick room, ten cents’ worth of human understanding equals ten dollars' worth of medical science.
— Martin H. Fischer
Martin H. Fischer, Howard Fabing (ed.) and Ray Marr (ed.), Fischerisms (1944).
It is not hard to learn more. What is hard is to unlearn when you discover yourself wrong
— Martin H. Fischer
It is unsafe to talk mathematics. Folks don’t understand.
— Martin H. Fischer
Martin H. Fischer, Howard Fabing (ed.) and Ray Marr (ed.), Fischerisms (1944), 3.
It takes fifty years from the discovery of a principle in medicine to its adoption in practice.
— Martin H. Fischer
In Jess M. Brallier, Medical Wit & Wisdom (1993), 29.
Knowledge is a process of piling up facts; wisdom lies in their simplification.
— Martin H. Fischer
In Fischerisms (1930), 7.
Life goes faster on protein.
— Martin H. Fischer
Life has been reduced to getting food out of cans.
— Martin H. Fischer
Life is a ticket to the greatest show on earth.
— Martin H. Fischer
Man embraces in his makeup all the natural orders; he’s a squid, a mollusk, a sucker and a buzzard; sometimes he’s a cerebrate.
— Martin H. Fischer
Many a diabetic has stayed alive by stealing the bread denied him by his doctor.
— Martin H. Fischer
Martin H. Fischer, Howard Fabing (ed.) and Ray Marr (ed.), Fischerisms (1944).
Medicine is the one place where all the show is stripped of the human drama. You, as doctors, will be in a position to see the human race stark naked—not only physically, but mentally and morally as well.
— Martin H. Fischer
Martin H. Fischer, Howard Fabing (ed.) and Ray Marr (ed.), Fischerisms (1944).
Minorities are the stars of the firmament; majorities, the darkness in which they float.
— Martin H. Fischer
None of the great discoveries was made by a “specialist” or a “researcher.”
— Martin H. Fischer
Martin H. Fischer, Howard Fabing (ed.) and Ray Marr (ed.), Fischerisms (1944).
Not fact-finding, but attainment to philosophy is the aim of science.
— Martin H. Fischer
…...
Nowadays the clinical history too often weighs more than the man.
— Martin H. Fischer
In Jess M. Brallier, Medical Wit & Wisdom (1993), 29.
Observation, Reason, Human Understanding, Courage; these make the physician.
— Martin H. Fischer
In Fischerisms (1930), 7.
Of all the supervised conditions for life offered man, those under U.S.A.’s constitution have proved the best. Wherefore, be sure when you start modifying, corrupting or abrogating it.
— Martin H. Fischer
On J-Day our profession will have a lot to answer for! We might at least have withheld our hands instead of making them work against God.
— Martin H. Fischer
Only one rule in medical ethics need concern you - that action on your part which best conserves the interests of your patient.
— Martin H. Fischer
Our moral theorists seem never content with the normal. Why must it always be a contest between fornication, obesity and laziness, and celibacy, fasting and hard labor?
— Martin H. Fischer
Our profession is the only one which works unceasingly to annihilate itself.
— Martin H. Fischer
Physiological response to thinking and to pain is the same; and man is not given to hurting himself.
— Martin H. Fischer
Physiology is the stepchild of medicine. That is why Cinderella often turns out the queen.
— Martin H. Fischer
Prize fighters can sometimes read and write when they start - but they can't when they finish.
— Martin H. Fischer
Psychology is physiology above the collar button.
— Martin H. Fischer
Reflexes and instincts are not pretty. It is their decoration that initiates art.
— Martin H. Fischer
Research has been called good business, a necessity, a gamble, a game. It is none of these—it’s a state of mind.
— Martin H. Fischer
Martin H. Fischer, Howard Fabing (ed.) and Ray Marr (ed.), Fischerisms (1944).
Research is the name given the crystal formed when the night’s worry is added to the day's sweat.
— Martin H. Fischer
Sin is commitable in thought, word or deed; so is virtue.
— Martin H. Fischer
Social reform aims to improve the condition of the poor by worsening the condition of the rich.
— Martin H. Fischer
Some day when you have time, look into the business of prayer, amulets, baths, and poultices, and discover much valuable therapy the profession has cast on the dump
— Martin H. Fischer
Martin H. Fischer, Howard Fabing (ed.) and Ray Marr (ed.), Fischerisms (1944).
Specialists never contribute anything to their specialty; Helmholtz wasn’t an eye-specialist, but a German army doctor who invented the ophthalmoscope one Saturday afternoon when there wasn’t anything else to do. Incidentally, he rewrote whole chapters of physics, so that the physicists only know him as one of their own. Robert Mayer wasn’t a physicist, but another country doctor; and Pasteur, who made bacteriology, was a tanner’s son or a chemist, as you will.
— Martin H. Fischer
In Fischerisms (1930), 7.
Surgery is the cry of defeat in medicine.
— Martin H. Fischer
In Fischerisms (1930), 7.
Sweat silently. Let's have no squawking about a little expenditure of energy.
— Martin H. Fischer
Take a man out of the trenches, make him a straw boss, and he develops a belly.
— Martin H. Fischer
The American is a gentle guy; but don't pressure him; if you do he turns toad and squirts poison.
— Martin H. Fischer
The analysis of man discloses three chemical elements - a job, a meal and a woman.
— Martin H. Fischer
The breakfast slimes, angel food cake, doughnuts and coffee, white bread and gravy cannot build an enduring nation.
— Martin H. Fischer
The first attribute that characterizes the greater man from the moron is his thicker layer of inhibition."
— Martin H. Fischer
The first rule to proper diet? Ask them what they want and then give it to them. There are few exceptions.
— Martin H. Fischer
Martin H. Fischer, Howard Fabing (ed.) and Ray Marr (ed.), Fischerisms (1944).
The great doctors all got their education off dirt pavements and poverty—not marble floors and foundations.
— Martin H. Fischer
Martin H. Fischer, Howard Fabing (ed.) and Ray Marr (ed.), Fischerisms (1944).
The great men of science are supreme artists.
— Martin H. Fischer
The greatest discoveries of surgery are anaesthesia, asepsis, and roentgenology—and none was made by a surgeon.
— Martin H. Fischer
Martin H. Fischer, Howard Fabing (ed.) and Ray Marr (ed.), Fischerisms (1944).
The heart is the only organ that takes no rest.
— Martin H. Fischer
Martin H. Fischer, Howard Fabing (ed.) and Ray Marr (ed.), Fischerisms (1944).
The inertia hardest to overcome is that of perfectly good seconds.
— Martin H. Fischer
The inventor of soda crackers has a place in hell.
— Martin H. Fischer
The judicial mind is too commonly characterized by a regard for a fourth decimal as the equal of a whole number.
— Martin H. Fischer
The natural philosophers are mostly gone. We modern scientists are adding too many decimals.
— Martin H. Fischer
The new appears as a minority point of view, and hence is unpopular. The function of a university is to give it a sanctuary.
— Martin H. Fischer
The only equipment lack in the modern hospital? Somebody to meet you at the entrance with a handshake!
— Martin H. Fischer
The only man we have any respect for, is he who uses all the endowment he has, and uses it until he bleeds.
— Martin H. Fischer
The patient does not care about your science; what he wants to know is, can you cure him?
— Martin H. Fischer
The practice of medicine is a thinker’s art, the practice of surgery a plumber’s.
— Martin H. Fischer
In Fischerisms (1930), 7.
The public blabbers about preventative medicine, but will neither appreciate nor pay for it. You get paid for what you cure.
— Martin H. Fischer
The public is hedged about by so many goddam bookkeepers that no time is left in which to produce. More time is spent in carrying out garbage than in carrying in food.
— Martin H. Fischer
The pure mathematician starts with an unknown and ends with an unknown.
— Martin H. Fischer
Martin H. Fischer, Howard Fabing (ed.) and Ray Marr (ed.), Fischerisms (1944), 40.
The refuge of the morally, intellectually, artistically and economically bankrupt is war.
— Martin H. Fischer
The self-appointed spokesmen for God incline to shout; He, Himself, speaks only in whispers.
— Martin H. Fischer
The specialist is a man who fears the other subjects.
— Martin H. Fischer
Martin H. Fischer, Howard Fabing (ed.) and Ray Marr (ed.), Fischerisms (1944).
The tears of the red, yellow, black, brown and white man are all the same.
— Martin H. Fischer
The thoughts of Plato and Machiavelli... don't seem quite enough armor for a world beset with splitting the atoms, urban guerrillas, nineteen varieties of psychotherapists, amplified guitars, napalm, computers, astronauts, and an atmosphere polluted simultaneously with auto exhaust and TV commercials.
— Martin H. Fischer
The world is your school.
— Martin H. Fischer
There is no substitute for mother’s milk.
— Martin H. Fischer
There is only one reason why men become addicted to drugs — they are weak men. Only strong men are cured, and they cure themselves.
— Martin H. Fischer
Martin H. Fischer, Howard Fabing (ed.) and Ray Marr (ed.), Fischerisms (1944).
There is only one reason why men become addicted to drugs, they are weak me. Only strong men are cured, and they cure themselves.
— Martin H. Fischer
Martin H. Fischer, Howard Fabing (ed.) and Ray Marr (ed.), Fischerisms (1944).
Truth is rarely writ in ink; it lives in nature.
— Martin H. Fischer
We are all parasites; we humans, the greatest.
— Martin H. Fischer
We humans are the greatest of earth’s parasites
— Martin H. Fischer
We starve the rats, creosote the ticks, swat the flies, step on the cockroaches and poison the scales. Yet when these pests appear in human form we go paralytic.
— Martin H. Fischer
What this country needs is radicals who will stay that way regardless of the creeping years.
— Martin H. Fischer
When a man lacks mental balance in pneumonia he is said to be delirious. When he lacks mental balance without the pneumonia, he is pronounced insane by all smart doctors.
— Martin H. Fischer
Martin H. Fischer, Howard Fabing (ed.) and Ray Marr (ed.), Fischerisms (1944).
When there is no explanation, then give it a name, which immediately explains everything
— Martin H. Fischer
Martin H. Fischer, Howard Fabing (ed.) and Ray Marr (ed.), Fischerisms (1944), 4.
When you no longer know what headache, heartache, or stomachache means without cistern punctures, electrocardiograms and six x-ray plates, you are slipping.
— Martin H. Fischer
Whenever ideas fail, men invent words.
— Martin H. Fischer
Martin H. Fischer, Howard Fabing (ed.) and Ray Marr (ed.), Fischerisms (1944).
Why should moral distinction be made between death by the spirochete and death by the streptococcus?
— Martin H. Fischer
You make me sick! You are offered meat and you choose a banana-split-with-nuts.
— Martin H. Fischer
You must learn to talk clearly. The jargon of scientific terminology which rolls off your tongues is mental garbage
— Martin H. Fischer
Martin H. Fischer, Howard Fabing (ed.) and Ray Marr (ed.), Fischerisms (1944).
You’re no good unless you are a good assistant; and if you are, you’re too good to be an assistant.
— Martin H. Fischer
Your mind works very simply: you are either trying to find out what are God’s laws in order to follow them; or you are trying to outsmart Him.
— Martin H. Fischer
Youth disserves; middle age conserves; old age preserves.
— Martin H. Fischer
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
