He bore the stamp of the unforgivable sin in a physician - uncertainty.

He's a Fool that makes his Doctor his Heir.

The doctor will persist in laboring under the delusion that patients want common sense instead of magic.

Optimistic lies have such immense therapeutic value that a doctor who cannot tell them convincingly has mistaken his profession.

Formerly, when religion was strong and science weak, men mistook magic for medicine; now, when science is strong and religion weak, men mistake medicine for magic.

The great secret of doctors, known only to their wives, but still hidden from the public, is that most things get better by themselves; most things, in fact, are better in the morning.

The witch doctor succeeds for the same reason all the rest of us succeed. Each patient carries his own doctor inside him. They come to us not knowing that truth. We are at our best when we give the doctor who resides within each patient a chance to go to work.

Can placebos cause side effects? If so, are the side effects real?

A really conscientious doctor ought to die with his patient. The captain goes down with his ship.

Life as we find it is too hard for us ... We cannot do without palliative remedies. There are perhaps three of these means: powerful diversions of interest, which lead us to care little about our misery; substitutive gratifications, which lessen it; and intoxicating substances, which make us insensitive to it.