# Physician

A physician (or medical doctor, a practitioner of a specialty listed by the national Board of Medical Specialties) who practices medicine or osteopathic medicine, and is concerned with maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of disease and injury. This is accomplished through a detailed knowledge of anatomy, physiology, diseases and treatment — the science of medicine — and its applied practice — the art or craft of medicine.

## Quotes

* I was feeling, so bad I asked my family doctor just what I had I said Doctor (Doctor) Mr. M.D. (Doctor) Now can you tell me what's ailing me (Doctor) He said yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah (Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah)
** Rudy Clark, "Good Lovin'" (1965)
* There is sometimes more Skill shewed by a Physician in not Prescribing, than in Prescribing. And there is no better Remedy for some Diseases, than to let them alone : for unseasonable meddling with them, may hinder their proceeding to a Crisis, and at long Run they will mend of themselves.
** Thomas Fuller, Introductio ad prudentiam (1727), pt. 2, aphorism 3064
* As to diseases, make a habit of two things—to help, or at least to do no harm.
** Hippocrates advice to physicians, Epidemics Book I, Second Constitution, §XI (c 400 BCE)
* Bugs Bunny: What's up doc?
** Rich Hogan, A Wild Hare (1940)
* For the first time in our tradition there was a complete separation between killing and curing. Throughout the primitive world the doctor and the sorcerer tended to be the same person. He with power to kill had power to cure, including specially the undoing of his own killing activities...This is a priceless possession which we cannot afford to tarnish, but society always is attempting to make the physician into a killer— to kill the defective child at birth, to leave the sleeping pills beside the bed of the cancer patient. It is the duty of society to protect the physician from such requests.
** Margaret Mead, on the Hippocratic Oath. Quoted in Maurice Levine, Psychiatry and Ethics (George Braziller, 1972), pp. 324-5, citing (notes, p. 377) a personal communication from Mead, 1961. Maurice Levine (1902-1971) was "distinguished former chairman of the University of Cincinnati Department of Psychiatry." Compare: "Who knows how to heal knows how to destroy" (qui scit sanare scit destruere) — A woman's testimony before the Inquisition, Modena, 1499. Quoted in John M. Riddle, Eve's Herbs: A History of Contraception and Abortion in the West (1999), p. 118
* Beverly Crusher: Where are the calluses we doctors are supposed to grow over our feelings?
    Jean-Luc Picard: Perhaps the good ones never get them.
   * Katharyn Powers, Michael Baron; "Code of Honor", Star Trek: The Next Generation, (October 12, 1987)
* First do no harm. (Latin: Primum non nocere)
** Proverbial short version of physicians' Hippocratic Oath
* Thou speak’st like a physician, Helicanus, That ministers a potion unto me That thou wouldst tremble to receive thyself.
** William Shakespeare, Pericles, Prince of Tyre (c. 1607/8), act 1, sc. 2 (Pericles)
* As testy sick men when their deaths be near, No news but health from their physicians know.
** William Shakespeare, Sonnet 140, l. 7 (pub. 1609)
* Les médecins administrent des médicaments dont ils savent très peu, à des malades dont ils savent moins, pour guérir des maladies dont ils ne savent rien.
** Doctors are men who prescribe medicine of which they know little, to cure diseases of which they know less, for human beings of which they know nothing.
** Attributed to Voltaire in Strauss' Familiar Medical Quotations (1968), p. 394, and in publications as early as 1956 ; the quotation in French does not, however, appear to be original, and is probably a relatively modern invention, only quoted in recent (21st century) published works, which attribute it to "Voltaire" without citing any source.
* Leonard McCoy: I'm a doctor, not a [moon shuttle conductor/bricklayer/psychiatrist/mechanic/engineer/scientist/physicist/escalator/magician/miracle worker/flesh peddler/veterinarian].
** Star Trek: The Original Series (8 September 1966 – 3 June 1969), various episodes

## See also

* Health care
* Hippocratic Oath
* Medical drama
* Medical ethics
* Medical malpractice
* Medical school
* Medicine