The Doctor’s Dilemma quotes

It is not the fault of our doctors that the medical service of the community, as at present provided for, is a murderous absurdity.

That any sane nation, having observed that you could provide for the supply of bread by giving bakers a pecuniary interest in baking for you, should go on to give a surgeon a pecuniary interest in cutting off your leg, is enough to make one …

Or, to take another common instance, comparisons which are really comparisons between two social classes with different standards of nutrition and education are palmed off as comparisons between the results of a certain medical treatment and its neglect.

Thus it is easy to prove that the wearing of tall hats and the carrying of umbrellas enlarges the chest, prolongs life, and confers comparative immunity from disease;

for the statistics show that the classes which use these articles are bigger, healthier, and live longer than the class which never dreams of possessing such things.

We call them by different names: Immunization or Radiology or whatnot; but the dreams which lure us into the adventures from which we learn are always at bottom the same.

Science becomes dangerous only when it imagines that it has reached its goal.

What is wrong with priests and popes is that instead of being apostles and saints, they are nothing but empirics who say “I know” instead of “I am learning,” and pray for credulity and inertia as wise men pray for scepticism and activity.

1.

Nothing is more dangerous than a poor doctor: not even a poor employer or a poor landlord.

2. Of all the antisocial vested interests the worst is the vested interest in ill-health.

2.

Of all the antisocial vested interests the worst is the vested interest in ill-health.

3. Remember that an illness is a misdemeanor; and treat the doctor as an accessory unless he notifies every case to the Public Health authority.

10.

Make it compulsory for a doctor using a brass plate to have inscribed on it, in addition to the letters indicating his qualifications, the words “Remember that I too am mortal.”

11. In legislation and social organization, proceed on the principle that invalids, meaning persons who cannot keep themselves alive by their own activities, cannot, beyond reason, expect to be kept alive by the activity of others.

12.

Do not try to live forever. You will not succeed.

13. Use your health, even to the point of wearing it out. That is what it is for. Spend all you have before you die; and do not outlive yourself.

13.

Use your health, even to the point of wearing it out. That is what it is for. Spend all you have before you die; and do not outlive yourself.

14. Take the utmost care to get well born and well brought up. This means that your mother must have a good doctor.

She has only one manner, and that is the manner of an old family nurse to a child just after it has learnt to walk.

She has used her ugliness to secure indulgences unattainable by Cleopatra or Fair Rosamund, and has the further great advantage over them that age increases her qualification instead of impairing it.

Being an industrious, agreeable, and popular old soul, she is a walking sermon on the vanity of feminine prettiness.

Grumbling and fumbling for his spectacles. Oh, bother your pamphlets. What’s the practice of it? Looking at the pamphlet. Opsonin? What the devil is opsonin?

Opsonin is what you butter the disease germs with to make your white blood corpuscles eat them.

He sits down again on the couch.

Of course they are.

Everything is dangerous unless you take it at the right time. An apple at breakfast does you good: an apple at bedtime upsets you for a week.

There are only two rules for antitoxins. First, don’t be afraid of them: second, inject them a quarter of an hour before meals, three times a day.

Mere experience by itself is nothing. If I take my dog to the bedside with me, he sees what I see. But he learns nothing from it. Why?

Because he’s not a scientific dog.

It amuses me to hear you physicians and general practitioners talking about clinical experience. What do you see at the bedside but the outside of the patient? Well: it isn’t his outside that’s wrong, except perhaps in skin cases.

Restlessly. Don’t, Blenkinsop: it’s too painful.

The most tragic thing in the world is a sick doctor.

Yes, by George: it’s like a bald-headed man trying to sell a hair restorer. Thank God I’m a surgeon!

Quite true.

I’ve not prescribed a drug for the last fifteen years.

Drugs can only repress symptoms: they cannot eradicate disease. The true remedy for all diseases is Nature’s remedy. Nature and Science are at one, Sir Patrick, believe me; though you were taught differently.

And a very good profession, too, my lad. When you know as much as I know of the ignorance and superstition of the patients, you’ll wonder that we’re half as good as we are.

We’re not a profession: we’re a conspiracy.

All professions are conspiracies against the laity. And we can’t all be geniuses like you. Every fool can get ill; but every fool can’t be a good doctor: there are not enough good ones to go round.

We’re not a profession: we’re a conspiracy.

All professions are conspiracies against the laity.

And we can’t all be geniuses like you. Every fool can get ill; but every fool can’t be a good doctor: there are not enough good ones to go round. And for all you know, Bloomfield Bonington kills less people than you do.

All professions are conspiracies against the laity. And we can’t all be geniuses like you.

Every fool can get ill; but every fool can’t be a good doctor: there are not enough good ones to go round.

And for all you know, Bloomfield Bonington kills less people than you do.

Alone.

Consultation free. Cure guaranteed.

He heaves a great sigh.

Oh, a charming young fellow. Besides, after all, what could be wrong with him? Look at him. What could be wrong with him?

There are two things that can be wrong with any man. One of them is a cheque. The other is a woman. Until you know that a man’s sound on these two points, you know nothing about him.

He’s all right as to the cheque, for a while at all events. He talked to me quite frankly before dinner as to the pressure of money difficulties on an artist.

and I won’t sell them. If none of you were to be able to meet me without being afraid that my civility was leading up to the loan of five shillings, there would be an end of everything for me.

I’ll take your old clothes, Colly, sooner than disgrace you by talking to you in the street in my own; but I won’t borrow money.

I’ll train it as far as the twopence will take me; and I’ll tramp the rest.

No.

You can’t improve on Nature in telling stories about gentlemen like Mr. Dubedat.

You certainly do stand by one another, you chosen people, Mr. Schutzmacher.

and he never wrote me a line or sent me an address. I never saw nor heard of him again until I caught sight of him from the window going off in the motor with that woman.

Well, that’s two wives to start with.

Now upon my soul I don’t want to be uncharitable; but really I’m beginning to suspect that our young friend is rather careless.

It would be simpler still if Dubedat had some of Blenkinsop’s honesty.

The world isn’t going to be made simple for you, my lad: you must take it as it is.

You’ve to hold the scales between Blenkinsop and Dubedat. Hold them fairly.

Yes, why not? Lots of people do it: just as good people as you.

Why don’t you learn to think, instead of bleating and bashing like a lot of sheep when you come up against anything you’re not accustomed to?

Contemplating their amazed faces with a chuckle. I say: I should like to draw the lot of you now: you do look jolly foolish. Especially you, Ridgeon. I had you that time, you know.

But you are all moral men; and Jennifer is only an artist’s wife—probably a model; and morality consists in suspecting other people of not being legally married. Aren’t you ashamed of yourselves? Can one of you look me in the face after it?

It’s very hard to look you in the face, Dubedat; you have such a dazzling cheek.

What about Minnie Tinwell, eh?

But is he to be allowed to defy the criminal law of the land?

The criminal law is no use to decent people. It only helps blackguards to blackmail their families.

What are we family doctors doing half our time but conspiring with the family solicitor to keep some rascal out of jail and some family out of disgrace?

I shouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that he’s well connected.

Whenever I meet dignity and self-possession without any discoverable basis, I diagnose good family.

Diagnose artistic genius, B.B. That’s what saves his self-respect.

It will.

My friendships end only with death.

Death ends everything, doesn’t it? Goodbye.

It will. My friendships end only with death.

Death ends everything, doesn’t it? Goodbye.

With a sigh and a look of pity at her which she does not understand, he goes.

I said the other day that the most tragic thing in the world is a sick doctor. I was wrong.

The most tragic thing in the world is a man of genius who is not also a man of honor.

Ridgeon and Walpole wheel the chair into the recess.

and returns to Sir Patrick as Ridgeon and Walpole come back from the recess, Walpole crossing the room to the hatstand, and Ridgeon coming between Sir Ralph and Sir Patrick. Poor fellow! Poor young fellow! How well he died! I feel a better man, really.

When you’re as old as I am, you’ll know that it matters very little how a man dies. What matters is, how he lives.

Every fool that runs his nose against a bullet is a hero nowadays, because he dies for his country. Why don’t he live for it to some purpose?

Don’t waste your time wrangling over him.

A blackguard’s a blackguard; an honest man’s an honest man; and neither of them will ever be at a loss for a religion or a morality to prove that their ways are the right ways.

It’s the same with nations, the same with professions, the same all the world over and always will be.