Prescribing Quotes (5 quotes)
In not a few the [opium-eating] habit has crept upon them almost unconsciously, during the medicinal use of opiates to soothe pain, to remove sleeplessness, or to arrest protracted bowel-complaint. The risk of this evil should therefore be carefully borne in mind, for life-long misery has often been caused by undue laxity in the prescribing of opiates.
In 'Clinical Lecture On The Treatment Of The Habit Of Opium-Eating', The British Medical Journal (15 Feb 1868), 1, No. 372, 137.
My opinion is, that more harm than good is done by physicians; and I am convinced, that, had I left my patients to nature, instead of prescribing drugs, more would have been saved.
Quoted by E.T.M. Hurlbut, 'Homeopathy, Hygiene, and Opium,' Address at Annual Meeting of the Nebraska State Homeopathic Medical Association, 19 May 1874. In William Riddle Childs, et al., Pamphlets - Homeopathic (1851), Vol. 6, 3.
Nine-tenths of diseases are medicinal diseases.
[Lamenting the diseases resulting from the continued prescribing of harmful medicinal remedies.]
[Lamenting the diseases resulting from the continued prescribing of harmful medicinal remedies.]
Quoted by William M. Scribner, 'Treatment of Pneumonia and Croup, Once More, Etc,' in The Medical World (1885), 3, 187.
No physician, in so far as he is a physician, considers his own good in what he prescribes, but the good of his patient; for the true physician is also a ruler having the human body as a subject, and is not a mere money-maker.
— Plato
In Plato and B. Jowett (trans.), The Dialogues of Plato (1875), Vol. 3, 211.
What makes philosophy so tedious is not the profundity of philosophers, but their lack of art; they are like physicians who sought to cure a slight hyperacidity by prescribing a carload of burned oyster-shells.
In A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949, 1956), 617.
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) -- 
