Medical Physiology Quotes & Sayings

Why is it, that from the moment you enter medical school to the moment you retire, that the only disorder you will ever diagnosis with a physics book - is obesity? This is biology folks, it's endocrinology, it's physiology - physics has nothing to do with it. The law of thermodynamics is always true, [but] the energy balance equation is irrelevant ... — Gary Taubes

When I was lecturing recently to a group of cardiologists at the Mayo Clinic I said ...
Why is it that from the moment you enter medical school to the moment you retire, the only disorder that you will ever diagnose with a physics textbook is obesity? This is biology folks, it's endocrinology, it's physiology - physics has nothing to do with it. The laws of thermodynamics are always true, the energy balance equation is irrelevant.
If someone's getting fatter I guarantee you they're taking more energy than they expend (as long as they're getting heavier). And if they're getting leaner I guarantee they're expending more than they're taking in. [It's] given, let's never discuss it again. And if you say it to your patients you're telling them nothing
(University Of Colorado Medical School, May 9th 2013 - via YouTube) — Gary Taubes

Physiology is the basis of all medical improvement and in precise proportion as our survey of it becomes more accurate and extended, it is rendered more solid. — John Gorrie

60 advocates of unorthodox therapies whose credentials are given in the ACS book (above).( Of these 60, thirty-nine or almost two-thirds, hold ... medical degrees from such universities as Harvard, Illinois, Northwestern, Yale, Dublin, Oxford, or Toronto. Two are osteopaths. 3 ... also hold ... (PhD's) ... scientific ... reputable ... 8 others received PhD's in such fields as chemistry, physiology, bacteriology, parasitology, or medical physics, from ... Yale, Johns Hopkins, UC Berkeley, Columbia, and NYU. Thus over 75% ... are medical doctors or doctors of philosophy in scientific areas. — Ralph W. Moss

One of the reasons why Australia and Canada have support for migration is because they control the numbers. — Michael Gove

Coffee first. Save the world later. — Caroline George

Medical training taught me the art of breaking down the complex maze of stories, symbols and rituals into clear systems. You could say that it helped me figure out the anatomy and physiology of mythology and its relevance in a society more incisively. How is it that no society can, or does, exist without them? — Devdutt Pattanaik

I think it's your bosoms." Rand Surveyed him critically. "The dress wouldn't be as tight if they weren;t so large. I think your bosoms are too big."
Alexei looked down at his overstuffed chest. "Can bosoms ever be too big?"
Not real bosoms perhaps, but I think in your case ... " Rand considered him thoughtfully. "No question about it: they're definately too big"
Are you sure?" Alexei studied his reflection. "I thought they were just the right size for a man of my height. — Victoria Alexander

I set up a laboratory in the Department of Physiology in the Medical School in South Africa and begin to try to find a bacteriophage system which we might use to solve the genetic code. — Sydney Brenner

The moral and medical lessons from this story are even more relevant today. Medicine is in the midst of a vast reorganization of fundamental principles. Most of our models of illness are hybrid models; past knowledge is mishmashed with present knowledge. These hybrid models produce the illusion of a systematic understanding of a disease - but the understanding is, in fact, incomplete. Everything seems to work spectacularly, until one planet begins to move backward on the horizon. We have invented many rules to understand normalcy - but we still lack a deeper, more unified understanding of physiology and pathology. — Siddhartha Mukherjee

In my second year, after moving to the Medical School, I began the courses of Anatomy and Physiology. I had begun to see that I was interested in cells and their functions. — Sydney Brenner

If belief in evolution is a requirement to be a real scientist, it's interesting to consider a quote from Dr. Marc Kirschner, founding chair of the Department of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School:
In fact, over the last 100 years, almost all of biology has proceeded independent of evolution, except evolutionary biology itself. Molecular biology, biochemistry, physiology, have not taken evolution into account at all. — Marc Kirschner

[ ... ] we have in our treatise a series of fifty-seven examinations, almost exclusively of injuries of the human body forming a group of observations furnishing us with the earliest known nucleus of fact regarding the anatomy, physiology and pathology of the human body. Crude and elementary as they are, the method by which they were collected was scientific, and these observations, together with the diagnoses and the explanatory commentary in the ancient glosses, form the oldest body of science now extant. — James Henry Breasted

The secret of success is constancy to purpose. — Benjamin Disraeli

For home had a way of shifting, of changing shape and temperature. Home was homeless. It could exist anywhere, because its only substance was familiarity. If it was broken by long journeys or tornadoes it emerged again, reinvented itself with new decor, new idiosyncrasies of morning, noon and dusk, and old routines. — Diana Evans

This report inflamed my mind to such a degree that I could not rest by night or day for dreaming golden dreams, and considering how to get to that rich district, unknown to civilized men. — William Henry Hudson

Once a day allow yourself the freedom to dream ... — Albert Einstein

A physician's physiology has much the same relation to his power of healing as a cleric's divinity has to his power of influencing conduct. — Samuel Butler

The shock was akin to that of buying, out of duty, a novel written by a dull and uninspired acquaintance and finding there passages of heartrending beauty and rapture that one could never imagine coming from such a tedious person. — Andrew Sean Greer