Henry Marsh Quotes

Anxiety might be contagious, but confidence is also contagious

But I then thought of how the value of my work as a doctor is measured solely in the value of other people's lives, and that included the people in front of me in the check-out queue.

How are you feeling?' I asked. 'Fine,' he replied with a tired smile. 'Well done!' I replied, as I think patients need to be congratulated for their surviving just as much as the surgeons should be congratulated for doing their job well. 'It's

We lauhed together for a long time. When we
had first met, her eyes were dull with pain-killing drugs and if she
tried to talk, her face would controt with agonizing pain. I thought
how radiantly beautiful she now looked. She stood up to leave and went
to the door but then came back and kissed me.
`I hope I never see you again,' she said.
`I quite understand,' I replied.

You might expect that seeing so much pain and suffering might help you keep your own difficulties in perspective but, alas, it does not.

But death is not always a bad outcome, you know, and a quick death can be better than a slow one.

The idea that my sucker is moving through thought itself, through emotion and reason, that memories, dreams and reflections should consist of jelly, is simply too strange to understand.

My readiness to admit to my fallibility is perhaps rather English, but I hope that the problems I describe will be familiar to doctors and patients everywhere.

CSF used to be called "gin-clear" when there was no blood or infection in it,' I say to Jeff. 'But probably we're now supposed to use alcohol-free terminology.' I

When I tell a patient that I think I should do their operation under local anaesthetic they usually look a little shocked. In fact the brain cannot itself feel pain since pain is a phenomenon produced within the brain.

Angor animi - the sense of being in the act of dying, differing from the fear of death or the desire for death.

Life without hope is hopelessly difficult but at the end hope can so easily make fools of us all.

When push comes to shove we can afford to lose an arm or a leg, but I am operating on peoples thoughts and feelings... and if something goes wrong I can destroy that persons character... forever.

Hope is beyond price and the pharmaceutical companies, which are run by businessmen not altruists, price their products accordingly.

Few people outside medicine realize that what tortures doctors most is uncertainty, rather than the fact they often deal with people who are suffering or who are about to die. It is easy enough to let somebody die if one knows beyond doubt that they cannot be saved - if one is a decent doctor one will be sympathetic, but the situation is clear. This is life, and we all have to die sooner or later. It is when I do not know for certain whether I can help or not, or should help or not, that things become so difficult.

Next morning I showed her brain scan to the juniors at

Doctors need to be held accountable, since power corrupts. There must be complaints procedures and litigation, commissions of enquiry, punishment and compensation. At the same time if you do not hide or deny any mistakes when things go wrong, and if your patients and their families know that you are distressed by whatever happened, you might, if you are lucky, receive the precious gift of forgiveness.