Updated April 19, 2015.

Here's what people, from the past and the present, have had to say about medicine and health care. Which one is your favorite? Which one do you find confusing? Which one do you disagree with?

1. "Men who are occupied in the restoration of health to other men, by the joint exertion of skill and humanity, are above all the great of the earth. They even partake of divinity, since to preserve and renew is almost as noble as to create."
   Voltaire (1694-1778) French writer and historian.

1. "Doctors are men who prescribe medicines of which they know little, to cure diseases of which they know less, in human beings of whom they know nothing."
   Voltaire (1694-1778) French writer and historian.
2. "In nothing do men more nearly approach the gods than in giving health to men."          Cicero
3. "If people let the government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as a sorry state as the souls who live under tyranny."      Thomas Jefferson
   
4. "The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will educate his patients in the care of the human frame, in diet, and in the cause and prevention of disease."                      Thomas Edison
   
5. "The superior doctor prevents sickness; The mediocre doctor attends to impending sickness; The inferior doctor treats actual sickness"
   Chinese proverb
   
6. "In the sick room, ten cents' worth of human understanding equals ten dollars' worth of medical science."                                                                                                             Martin H. Fischer
   

1. "More people live off cancer than die from it."                                                                      Dr. Deepak Chopra
   
2. "Water, air, and cleanness are the chief articles in my pharmacy."
   Napoleon I (1769-1821) Napoleon Bonaparte. French general.
   
3. "They do certainly give very strange, and newfangled, names to diseases."
   Plato (BC 427-BC 347) Greek philosopher. [Plato said this 400 years B.C.!]
   
4. "It is easy to get a thousand prescriptions but hard to get one single remedy."            Chinese Proverb
   
5. "Drugs are not always necessary. Belief in recovery always is."                                               Norman Cousins
   
6. "The worst thing about medicine is that one kind makes another necessary."                Elbert Hubbard
   
7. "He is the best physician who is the most ingenious inspirer of hope."
   Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) British poet, critic, and philosopher.
   
8. "Physicians and politicians resemble one another in this respect, that some defend the constitution and others destroy it."                                                                                 Author Unknown
   
9. “To her [Florence Nightingale] chiefly I owed the awakening to the fact that sanitation is the supreme goal of medicine its foundation and its crown.” 
   Elizabeth Blackwell, Pioneer Work In Opening The Medical Profession To Women
   
10. "A smart mother makes often a better diagnosis than a poor doctor."                           August Bier
    
11. "The difference between an itch and an allergy is about one hundred bucks."
    Unknown Source
    
12. "Financial ruin from medical bills is almost exclusively an American disease."                 Roul Turley
    
13. "It is not a case we are treating; it is a living, palpitating, alas, too often suffering fellow creature."                                                                                                                            John Brown
    
14. "He that takes medicine and neglects to diet himself wastes the skill of the physician."         Chinese Proverb
    
15. A Short History of Medicine
    2000 B.C. - "Here, eat this root."
    1000 B.C. - "That root is heathen, say this prayer."
    1850 A.D. - "That prayer is superstition, drink this potion."
    1940 A.D. - "That potion is snake oil, swallow this pill."
    1985 A.D. - "That pill is ineffective, take this antibiotic."
    2000 A.D. - "That antibiotic is artificial. Here, eat this root."
    Author Unknown
    
16. "150 people die every year from being hit by falling coconuts. Not to worry, drug makers are developing a vaccine."                                                                                                   Jim Carrey
    
17. "Constant attention by a good nurse may be just as important as a major operation by a surgeon."                                                                                                                            Dag Hammarskjold
    
18. "Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity."                                                                                      World Health Organization, 1948