Medical Work Quotes & Sayings

The willingness to relegate a person in my father's situation to a lower and less vigilant degree of medical attention was an accurate reflection of the values of a social system which, as I had learned in my own work in education, measures human life, more frequently than not, in rather hard-nosed and explicit terms of future payoff to the national well-being. — Jonathan Kozol

To be without health insurance in this country means to be without access to medical care. But health is not a luxury, nor should it be the sole possession of a privileged few. We are all created b'tzelem elohim - in the image of God - and this makes each human life as precious as the next. By 'pricing out' a portion of this country's population from health care coverage, we mock the image of God and destroy the vessels of God's work. — Alexander Schindler

Unusual precocity in children, is usually the result of an unhealthy state of the brain; and, in such cases, medical men would now direct, that the wonderful child should be deprived of all books and study, and turned to play or work in the fresh air. — Catharine Beecher

Thank God for modern medicine. It was not until 1905 that ergophobia (the morbid fear of returning to work) was first identified and reported in the British Medical Journal. As yet there is no known cure, but doctors have been working on it, and may get back to working on it sometime soon. — Mark Forsyth

With me, it was my liver that was out of order. [ ... ] I had the symptoms, beyond all mistake, the chief among them being "a general disinclination to work of any kind."
What I suffer in that way no tongue can tell. From my earliest infancy I have been a martyr to it. As a boy, the disease hardly ever left me for a day. They did not know, then, that it was my liver. Medical science was in a far less advanced state than now, and they used to put it down to laziness. — Jerome K. Jerome

I want medical experiments on animals stopped. They don't do anything, and they don't work. — Sam Simon

Many midwives work as employees in large hospital practices, where the techno-medical model of care is still the rule. In practices like these, midwives are used to attract women who desire midwifery care, but they may in fact be under constant pressure to practice within the techno-medical mode. — Ina May Gaskin

When I'm engaged in a story my health is not a big deal, but when I'm not doing anything, if you sit me down, I can get tied up in my own medical dramas. So I much prefer to work. — Katherine Boo

Medical physicists work in cooperation with doctors. A few medical physicists devote their time to research and teaching. A few get involved with administrative duties. — John Cameron

As the prisoners' commanding officer and senior medical officer, Dorrigo Evans reported to Major Nakamura that four men had died the day before, two overnight, and that this left eight hundred and thirty-eight POWs. Of this eight hundred and thirty-eight, sixty-seven had cholera and were in the cholera compound, and another one hundred and seventy-nine were in hospital with severe illness. A further one hundred and sixty-seven were too ill for any work other than light duties. — Richard Flanagan

As a player, I was fortunate to work with coaching and medical staffs that underscored the importance of utilizing injury prevention exercises, which contributed to my healthy and long playing career. — Cobi Jones

The medical literature tells us that the most effective ways to reduce the risk of heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, Alzheimer's, and many more problems are through healthy diet and exercise. Our bodies have evolved to move, yet we now use the energy in oil instead of muscles to do our work. — David Suzuki

Those days are long gone. But our corporations haven't caught up with it. Our law firms, our higher education system, and our medical institutions haven't figured out how this family policy is going to work. Men are tired of the 80- to 100-hour work week as well. — Vicki Donlan

Become the adviser to presidents and an honored member of New England society. Ohiyesa, or Eastman, went to Beloit College where he learned English and immersed himself in the culture and ways of the white world. Upon graduation he went east. He attended Dartmouth College, then was accepted into medical school at Boston University, which he completed in 1890. He returned to his native Midwest to work among his own people as a physician on the Pine Ridge reservation, — Kent Nerburn

After the trial, I watched as another female pathologist collected maggots from a spinal column found in the desert. There was a decomposed head, too, and before leaving work she planned to simmer it and study the exposed cranium for contusions. I was asked to pass this information along to the chief medical examiner, and, looking back, I perhaps should have chosen my words more carefully. 'Fire up the kettle,' I told him. 'Ol'-fashioned skull boil at five p.m. — David Sedaris

The theory of medicine, therefore, presents what is useful in thought, but does not indicate how it is to be applied in practice-the mode of operation of these principles. The theory, when mastered, gives us a certain kind of knowledge. Thus we say, for example, there are three forms of fevers and nine constitutions. The practice of medicine is not the work which the physician carries out, but is that branch of medical knowledge which, when acquired, enables one to form an opinion upon which to base the proper plan of treatment. — Avicenna

Before journalism, I had worked doing medical aid work in conflict zones. Then, as a journalist, I had written about hospitals in war zones. — Sheri Fink

You know, Guido, at times I find it difficult to believe you do the sort of work you do. (Medical examiner's view of Commissario Guido Brunetti) — Donna Leon

No matter who you are, what you've accomplished, what your financial situation is - when you're dealing with a parent with Alzheimer's, you yourself feel helpless. The parent can't work, can't live alone, and is totally dependent, like a toddler. As the disease unfolds, you don't know what to expect. — Maria Shriver

A placebo is a phony cure that works. This is very hard for the medical profession to get their teeth around because they hate placebos, but scientifically, placebos work in about 30% of cases that are psychogenic diseases. — Charles Jencks

Now of the difficulties bound up with the public in which we doctors work, I hesitate to speak in a mixed audience. Common sense in matters medical is rare, and is usually in inverse ratio to the degree of education. — William Osler

You don't need treatment. The fever, inflammation, coughing, etc., constitute the healing process. Just get out of their way and permit them to complete their work. Don't try to 'aid' nature. She doesn't need your puny aid - she only asks that you cease interfering. — Herbert M. Shelton

Attorneys are more inclined to gouge clients than some other professionals are such as medical doctors and dentist simply because most clients do not need continuous legal care. Comparable to undertakers, legal work does not generate many repeat clients. — Kilroy J. Oldster

I desire no other epitaph - no hurry about it, I may say - than the statement that I taught medical students in the wards, as I regard this as by far the most useful and important work I have been called upon to do. — William Osler

As we returned to Argentina, I started seriously to work towards a doctoral degree under the direction of Professor Stoppani, the Professor of Biochemistry at the Medical School. — Cesar Milstein

I'm a good person. I eat pretty well. I work out. I go to bookstores. I save people. For a living. I have better things to do than get hauled in for a medical checkup every week. Have I complained the last few months? Constantly. Was I a good patient? No. What can I say? When your primary care provider is a shadowy government agency, you have to be your own medical advocate. — Chelsea Cain

I wound up getting my degree in sports medicine and nutrition because I wanted to work in the medical field. But I wound up taking a trip to Los Angeles and decided being an actor sounds pretty cool, too. — Derek Theler

But I spent just two calendar years at Cornell University, though it was covering more than three years of work, and then went to medical school and did become interested in psychiatry, and even helped form a kind of psychiatry club in medical school. — Robert Jay Lifton

It's so gratifying to see people face to face who get to meet the people who are giving them a fair price for their work. They can now provide medical support for their kids, give them better education and in general have a better standard of living. God knows they deserve it. — Nell Newman

Who is secure in all his basic needs? Who has work, spiritual care, medical care, housing, food, occasional entertainment, free clothing, free burial, free everything? The answer might be nuns and monks, but the standard reply is 'prisoners'. — Erik Von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

If you see a homeless person on the street, and they need food, housing, medical attention - if you can give that, do it. But at the same time, work with tonglen, because that is how you start dissolving the barrier between you and them. — Pema Chodron

The truth is, the vast majority of medical care for lower income people in America is shitty. If you go to a free clinic to receive any form of care, the majority of those will be overcrowded with nurses who are tired because they have to work with so many people. We are not a country that invests public money into taking care of poor people, so we usually rely on clinics with very overburdened and underpaid staff. — Molly Crabapple

You wanted to become a doctor to help people and feel better at the end of your job, I think, watching them, as the nurse takes my hand. But I don't think you do feel better at the end of the day. You look like humans have constantly disappointed you. — Caitlin Moran

Why is it that medical strictures and recommendations so often work in favor of food processors and against food producers? Why, for example, do we so strongly favor the pasteurization of milk to health and cleanliness in milk production? (Gene Logsdon correctly says that the motive here "is monopoly, not consumer's health.") — Wendell Berry

When I last looked, there weren't queues of eager guys under 40 hanging outside single ladies' doors begging them to give up work and have their babies. It takes two to tango and the same number, without medical help, to make a child. — Mariella Frostrup

The investigations thereon resultant have appeared in medical and dental journals for the past two decades. The present work is chiefly based on these researches. — Eugene Solomon Talbot

If I were a medical man, I should prescribe a holiday to any patient who considered his work important. — Bertrand Russell

When you want to join a prestigious social club, do you wonder if your race will make it difficult to join? If you do well in a situation, do you expect to be called a credit to your race? Or to be described as different from the majority of your race? If you need legal or medical help, do you worry that your race might work against you? If you take a job with an affirmative action employer, do you worry that your co-workers will think that you are unqualified and were hired only because of your race? Do you worry that your children will not have books and school materials that are about people of their own race? — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

subjection to conditions of life which, by lack of proper housing, clothing, food, hygiene and medical care, or excessive work or physical exertion are likely to result in the debilitation or death of the individuals; or — Garry Leech

This is a really big space station. We do a lot of various kinds of work here, different kinds of science experiments; we have over 400 different experiments going on at any one time in different areas, from basic science research to medical technology, that hopefully will benefit more people on Earth. — Scott Kelly

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

Intellectually he knows that the blood is being pressed to the back of his body, pooling in the back part of his cerebellum and flooding his kidneys. He hasn't done enough medical work to know what that means, but it can't be good. — James S.A. Corey

The stories in this book link an ancient story with the children's stories. Rather than medical case reports based on certainty of what scientists currently understand, they are simply an attempt to be faithful to what I have heard. In this sense, they continue Jesus' commissioned work of revealing that there is a realm that we cannot yet fully understand. The greatest gift in my life has been in linking the ancient story and the children's stories to my own ... As I sit by the beds of these children, I have seen God's love made manifest in this descending way. I have seen Jesus Christ come again and again and again to bring peace and to link the children's stories with His own. — Diane M. Komp - Pediatric Oncologist

It is an irony of medical history that even as Freud's later work would make him the progenitor of modern psychodynamic psychotherapy, which is generally premised on the idea that mental illness arises from unconscious psychological conflicts, his papers on cocaine make him one of the fathers of biological psychiatry, which is governed by the notion that mental distress is partly caused by a physical or chemical malfunction that can be treated with drugs. — Scott Stossel

This book is also not intended to be a substitute or replacement for competent medical or psychological treatment when these may be needed. If you suffer from very severe anxiety, severe phobias, severe depression or any other serious mental health condition, the advice in this book may not be appropriate or sufficient for you. You are advised to consult and work with an experienced mental health professional, if you are not already doing so. Also, if you believe that your symptoms or your problems are beginning to get worse as you read this book, you should stop reading it immediately and consult a trained health professional. — Doc Orman

It is possible for the assembly-line worker consigned to tightening the bolts on the transmission and the office worker who processes medical insurance claims to work with pride and efficiency, but it's not easy to maintain that attitude. — Paul Hawken

Sophia was asked to speak to the students of a local medical school.
"Sophia, what do we need to be better doctors?" the students asked.
"Doctors," Sophia said, "need strong stomachs and strong powers of observation." Then she opened a canister. The putrid smell quickly moved through the classroom. Sophia stuck a finger in the jar, pulled it up, and then licked it. She passed the jar around encouraging each doctor in training to do the same. Each did, and though many felt nauseas, no one got sick.
"You all have very strong stomachs," she said. "But your powers of observation need some work."
"What do you mean?" they asked. "We did just what you did."
"There is one difference," she replied. "The finger I dipped in the jar was not the finger I licked. — David W. Jones

With the loss of acute illnesses we have seen a loss of human potential and a dramatic increase in chronic 'incurable' diseases. If we want to return to health, we have to look at disease in a way that is different from the accepted medical models, because these models do not work. There has been no overall improvement in the mortality rates for most forms of cancer in the past 100 years, yet still people put their faith in drugs, surgery and radiation. Terminal patients are often offered 'new drugs' in the hope of prolonging life but are in fact being treated as little more than guinea pigs. All disease is curable, but the cure can only be found within the body. — Barbara Wren

I heard of Bobby first early in the winter, from a Bible-reader at the Medical Mission in the Cowgate, who saw the little dog's master buried. He sees many strange, sad things in his work, but nothing ever shocked him so as the lonely death of that pious old shepherd in such a picturesque den of vice and misery." "Ay, — Eleanor Atkinson

Glad to know about all of you who care about books, including or especially poetry. I'm a much published writer/editor of 12 books (medical nonfiction, literary novels, mysteries) and much short work, inc. prize-winning pieces. — Carole Spearin McCauley

Our aim for ever must be the pursuit of the knowledge of Man in his entirety. To study the flesh, the skin, the bones, the organs, the nerves of Man, is to equip our minds with a knowledge that will enable us to search beyond the body. The noble profession at whose threshold you stand as neophytes is not an end in itself. The science of Anatomy contributes to the great sum of all Knowledge, which is the Truth: the whole Truth of the Life of Man upon this turning earth. And so: Observe precisely. Record exactly. Neglect nothing. Fear no foe. Never swerve from your purpose. Pay no heed to Safety.
For I believe that all men can be happy and that the good life can be led upon this earth.
I believe that all men must work towards that end.
And I believe that that end justifies any means ... .
Let no scruples stand in the way of the progress of medical science! — Dylan Thomas

I teach in the medical school, the School of Public Health, the Kennedy School of Government, and the Business School. And it's the best perch ... because most of my work crosses boundaries. — Michael Porter

Do not let either the medical authorities or the politicians mislead you. Find out what the facts are, and make your own decisions about how to live a happy life and how to work for a better world. — Linus Pauling

One of the outstanding features of Vanni society was the degree of integration of disabled people into the mainstream. They could be seen actively participating in many spheres, carrying out work with grit and amazing agility. People with one arm would ride motorbikes with heavy loads behind them on their motorbikes. You would hardly have known that some people you worked with were missing a leg from below the knee. Disability had been normalized. Serving these people was the only prosthetic-fitting service in Vanni, Venpuraa. This also expanded its service with the introduction of new technology. A common phrase one heard even prior to the Mullivaikaal genocide was about so and so having a piece of shrapnel in some part of their body. Many people lived with such pieces in their body and suffered varying degrees of pain as a result. Visiting medical experts did their best to remove the ones causing the most severe pain. — N. Malathy

I do hope to be an adult actor. But if it doesn't work out, I've been thinking about doing something in the medical therapy field, chiropractics or something like that. I've always been into the idea of helping people medically, but I can't stand blood or surgery. That freaks me out. So this would be a bloodless way to help people. — Nathan Kress

Pace yourself in your work and commitments. Nobody is indispensable. And when you get sick, honor your body by giving it the rest and medical attention that it's asking for. — Sue Patton Thoele

As the workplace becomes more specialized, from offices to medical centers to factories, teams of people must accomplish their work by collaborating with each other. In my work in filmmaking, we need talented individuals with technical skills, but their abilities to communicate and work with others are just as valuable. — George Lucas

Most medical physicists work in the physics of radiation oncology making sure that the desired dose is given to the cancer and the dose to normal tissues are minimized. — John Cameron

No doctor knows everything. There's a reason why it's called "practising" medicine. — Anonymous

As a medical doctor who chose a career in artificial heart technology rather than clinical practice, I decided not to take an internship, which is required for licensing. Instead, I work with invention, manufacturing, regulatory affairs, and clinical application of artificial hearts. — Robert Jarvik

The deeper he got into his medical career, the more Burry felt constrained by his problems with other people in the flesh. He briefly tried to hide in pathology, where the people had the decency to be dead, but that didn't work. — Michael Lewis

The hardest conviction to get into the mind of a beginner is that the education upon which he is engaged is not a college course, not a medical course, but a life course, for which the work of a few years under teachers is but a preparation. — William Osler

It's been great, I have to dig deep for really raw emotions and at the same time I have to use my intellect to say the ridiculous medical jargon while acting and treating a patient and then I have to try to have a personality and emotions as well. So it is definitely hard work. — John Leguizamo

Now a cholera epidemic was sweeping through Southeast Asia and south Asia in the early 1970s, so I started medical school and I joined a laboratory to work on this. — Peter Agre

I basically believe the medical insurance industry should be nonprofit, not profit-making. There is no way a health reform plan will work when it is implemented by an industry that seeks to return money to shareholders instead of using that money to provide health care. — Dianne Feinstein

The adult was Eric "Rusty" Everett, thirty-seven, a physician's assistant working with Dr. Ron Haskell, whom Rusty often thought of as The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Because, Rusty would have explained, he so often remains behind the curtain while I do the work. — Stephen King

Anyone having to do with medicine will have looked at Frank Netter's art work ... I decided I would make him my model ... getting my degree in medical illustration and then going on to medical school. — David Bolinsky

The model sanctuary was borne of a complex, political, societal debate. It was proposed to us from various bodies that we give models medicals once a year, and if they didn't pass that medical, there's a chance they'd legally lose their right to work. — Erin O'Connor

When I was at school studying biology, I wanted to be a medical researcher. I did work experience at St Mary's Hospital in London, and I begged them to let me see the post mortems. So the first time I saw a naked male was at 15, when I saw an 89 year old man who had died of a brain hemorrhage. — Katherine Parkinson

Another common practice, the reps told us, was to take fancy meals to the entire doctor's office (one of the perks of being a nurse or receptionist, I suppose). One doctor's office even required alternating days of steak and lobster for lunch if the reps wanted access to the doctors. Even more shocking, we found out that physicians sometimes called the reps into the examination room (as an "expert") to directly inform patients about the way certain drugs work. Hearing stories from the reps who sold medical devices was even more disturbing. We learned that it's common practice for device reps to peddle their medical devices in the operating room in real time and while a surgery is under way. Janet and I were surprised at how well the pharmaceutical reps understood classic psychological persuasion strategies and how they employed them in a sophisticated and intuitive manner. — Dan Ariely

The pupil's imagination is 'schooled' to accept service in place of value. Medical treatment is mistaken for health care, social work for the improvement of community life, police protection for safety, military poise for national security, the rat race for productive work. — Ivan Illich

The grounding in natural sciences which I obtained in the course of my medical studies, including preliminary examinations in botany, zoology, physics, and chemistry, was to become decisive in determining the trend of my literary work. — Johannes Vilhelm Jensen

You know those FBI shows on TV? Where they do the profiling?"
"Yeah."
"Cops hate that stuff. While it's all well and good to sit behind a desk and have assigned characteristics and fancy medical names for criminals," Jerry said in a prissy voice, "at the end of the day, you just don't know what anybody's gonna do. You gotta prepare for everything. Human beings are unpredictable. After three decades with PD, I still get surprised. — Jennifer Hillier

The Family and Medical Leave Act, for example, only entitles spouses, grown children, and parents to take time off to care for a sick loved one. If a childless single person falls ill, only her parents have the legal right to take off work to care for her. If they're deceased or not up to the task, she's out of luck. Even if she has a sister, niece, or best friend willing to take a leave, they won't be legally entitled to do so. No one has the right to care for her. — Sara Eckel

He had no longer free energy enough for spontaneous research and speculative thinking, but by the bedside of patients the direct external calls on his judgment and sympathies brought the added impulse needed to draw him out of himself. It was not simply that beneficent harness of routine which enables silly men to live respectably and unhappy men to live calmly - it was a perpetual claim on the immediate fresh application of thought, and on the consideration of another's need and trial. Many of us looking back through life would say that the kindest man we have ever known has been a medical man, or perhaps that surgeon whose fine tact, directed by deeply-informed perception, has come to us in our need with a more sublime beneficence than that of miracle-workers. Some of that twice-blessed mercy was always with Lydgate in his work at the Hospital or in private houses, serving better than any opiate to quiet and sustain him under anxieties and his sense of mental degeneracy. — George Eliot

My opportunity to design school choice systems began in 2003 with a phone call from Jeremy Lack at the New York City Department of Education. He knew of my work on the medical match and wondered if similar efforts might help reorganize the dysfunctional, congested system then used to match students to high schools. — Alvin E. Roth

Possible ways of attempting to distinguish counselling from psychotherapy include: that psychotherapy deals more with mental disorders than counselling; that psychotherapy is longer-term and deeper; and that psychotherapy is predominantly associated with medical settings. However, matters are by no means this clear-cut. Many counsellors work in medical settings, have helpees with recognized mental disorders, and do longer-term work that may or may not be of a deep psychodynamic nature. — Richard Nelson-Jones

[Director] Peter Wallerstein does great work rescuing sea life along the shores of LA, and I helped raise money for sanctuaries such as Chimp Haven, who are now taking in over two hundred medical lab chimps released from government-funded medical testing labs. — Alison Eastwood

A great deal of the American medical community's resources is geared to addressing the cosmetic needs of both women and men whom fear that by showing the deleterious effects of aging their marital relationship is in jeopardy. The most ethical plastic surgeons decline to perform impetuous work; the less ethical, but often the wealthiest professionals, perform all requested work irrespective of the long-term viability of the services rendered. The plastic surgeon's sales pitch is predictable: everyone can receive the face that he or she can afford. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Even so, mankind will suffer badly from the disease of boredom, a disease spreading more widely each year and growing in intensity. This will have serious mental, emotional and sociological consequences, and I dare say that psychiatry will be far and away the most important medical specialty in 2014.
The lucky few who can be involved in creative work of any sort will be the true elite of mankind, for they alone will do more than serve a machine.
"Visit to The World's Fair of 2014," The New York Times, August 1964 — Isaac Asimov

Jobless workers, especially those out of work for months and years, don't have the skills to multitask in a fast-paced economy where medical workers need to know electronic record-keeping, machinists need computer skills, and marketing managers can no longer delegate software duties. — Nina Easton

The work directed against mosquitoes carrying yellow fever had an equally good effect upon malaria, especially when anti-anopheles work was extended to the suburbs of the city. Before the year 1901 Havana had yearly from 300 to 500 deaths from malaria, rising as high in 1898 as 1,900 deaths. Since 1901 there has been a steady decrease in the malaria death rate until 1912, when there were only four deaths. Four deaths from malaria in a city in the tropics the size of Havana, about 300,000 population, means the extinction of malaria in that city. — William Crawford Gorgas

Equally serious is the complaint that psychoanalysis as a medical practice is a form of oppressive social control, labelling individuals and forcing them to conform to arbitrary definitions of 'normality'. This charge is in fact more usually aimed against psychiatric medicine as a whole: as far as Freud's own views on 'normality' are concerned, the accusation is largely misdirected. Freud's work showed, scandalously, just how 'plastic' and variable in its choice of objects libido really is, how so-called sexual perversions form part of what passes as normal sexuality, and how heterosexuality is by no means a natural or self-evident fact. It is true that Freudian psychoanalysis does usually work with some concept of a sexual 'norm'; but this is in no sense given by Nature. — Terry Eagleton

I'm very proud that the first bill I had the opportunity to sign into law as President was the Family and Medical Leave Act No parent should ever have to choose between work and family; between earning a decent wage and caring for a child. — William J. Clinton

I believe sometimes medical issues just happen
they're not cosmic tests; they're not retribution for all the naughty things you've done over a lifetime. It's not some moral righting of the universe. It's just something going wonky with the wiring ... And I think God cries when we're in pain; he cries with us and he supports us. But I also believe he stands back and lets us sort things out. Lets the doctors do their work. Lets your body heal itslef. — Kate Jacobs

All medical procedures require two hands, so in a sense it's like when you play an instrument. That's what they call things that they use in their work: They call them instruments. A lot of people start out majoring in medicine and drop it and change their major to music. — Tom Waits

The greatest analgesic, soporific, stimulant, tranquilizer, narcotic, and to some extent even antibiotic - in short, the closest thing to a genuine panacea - known to medical science is work. — Thomas Szasz

I do not want medical men to discuss whether or not my work is valuable, because I know what it will do. I want them to tell me how best this new knowledge of rapidly restoring paralysed people to health and strength can be applied where it is needed. — Elizabeth Kenny

Few sciences are as rooted in shame, infamy, and bad PR as human anatomy. The troubles began in Alexandrian Egypt, circa 300 B.C. King Ptolemy I was the first leader to deem it a-okay for medical types to cut open the dead for the purpose of figuring out how bodies work. — Mary Roach

By the time I walked down the aisle - or rather, into a judge's chambers - I had lived fourteen independent years, early adult years that my mother had spent married. I had made friends and fallen out with friends, had moved in and out of apartments, had been hired, fired, promoted, and quit. I had had roommates I liked and roommates I didn't like and I had lived on my own; I'd been on several forms of birth control and navigated a few serious medical questions; I'd paid my own bills and failed to pay my own bills; I'd fallen in love and fallen out of love and spent five consecutive years with nary a fling. I'd learned my way around new neighborhoods, felt scared and felt completely at home; I'd been heartbroken, afraid, jubilant, and bored. I was a grown-up: a reasonably complicated person. I'd become that person not in the company of any one man, but alongside my friends, my family, my city, my work, and, simply, by myself. I was not alone. — Rebecca Traister

I remembered that my grandfather had spent his teenage years in Shanghai and that he went back after he finished medical school to work there in a hospital. So I went back into my family archives and was able to find out his exact address; it was a street that was in the French Concession. — Kevin Kwan

You can't be too careful about work. It's the most dangerous habit known to medical science. — Eugene O'Neill

As a child Gottfried was very close to his mother, and his memories of those early years are sunny and warm. But before he turned ten, his mother developed cancer, and died in great pain. The young boy could have felt sorry for himself and become depressed, or he could have adopted hardened cynicism as a defense. Instead he began to think of the disease as his personal enemy, and swore to defeat it. In time he earned a medical degree and became a research oncologist, and the results of his work have become part of the pattern of knowledge that eventually will free mankind of this scourge. In this case, again, a personal tragedy became transformed into a challenge that can be met. In developing skills to meet that challenge, the individual improves the lives of other people. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

It is unsettling to find how little it takes to defeat success in medicine. You come as a professional equipped with expertise and technology. You do not imagine that a mere matter of etiquette could foil you. But the social dimension turns out to be as essential as the scientific
matters of how casual you should be, how formal, how reticent, how forthright. Also: how apologetic, how self-confident, how money-minded. In this work against sickness, we begin not with genetic or cellular interactions, but with human ones. They are what make medicine so complex and fascinating. How each interaction is negotiated can determine whether a doctor is trusted, whether a patient is heard, whether the right diagnosis is made, the right treatment given. But in this realm there are no perfect formulas. — Atul Gawande

For the past 10 years I have had the interesting experience of observing the development of Parkinson's syndrome on myself. As a matter of fact, this condition does not come under my special medical interests or I would have had it solved long ago. ... The condition has its compensations: one is not yanked from interesting work to go to the jungles of Burma ... one avoids all kinds of deadly committee meetings, etc. — Fuller Albright

I thought that if acting didn't work out, I'd have done law school or medical school: probably law to be honest. — Jesse Williams

Everyone is tied down in some way. Work, family, medical problems. It's what you make of it. That's why it's so important to surround yourself with the things that make you happy. If you have a bad day at work but get to come home to a woman you love or your favorite hobby, the rest doesn't matter as much. — Nichole Chase

Our society assigns us a tiny number of roles: We're producers of one thing at work, consumers of a great many things all the rest of the time, and then, once a year or so, we take on the temporary role of citizen and cast a vote. Virtually all our needs and desires we delegate to specialists of one kind or another - our meals to the food industry, our health to the medical profession, entertainment to Hollywood and the media, mental health to the therapist or the drug company, caring for nature to the environmentalist, political action to the politician, and on and on it goes. Before long it becomes hard to imagine doing much of anything for ourselves - anything, that is, except the work we do "to make a living." For everything else, we feel like we've lost the skills, or that there's someone who can do it better ... it seems as though we can no longer imagine anyone but a professional or an institution or a product supplying our daily needs or solving our problems. — Michael Pollan

The term 'Xiaokang' is used today to refer to a society where people can receive education, get paid through work, have access to medical services and old-age support, have a shelter and more than enough food and clothing, and lead a well-off life. — Li Keqiang

The world - not to mention the American Medical Association - is pretty far from accepting this fact, but the person working with the computer doesn't have to be a doctor or even a medical expert. She has to be good at understanding and correcting the computer's mistakes, which is a very different skill. This will involve some knowledge of medicine, brain scans, or whatever, but it is a less comprehensive medical knowledge than what a prestigious MD would have. It may well involve more knowledge of smart machines, how they work, and what their failings are likely to be. — Tyler Cowen