Ancient Medicine Quotes

The first physician who is known to have counted the pulse, Herophilos of Alexandria (born 300 B.C.), lived in Egypt. ~ James Henry Breasted

The distinction between nerves and vessels was not demonstrated until the Third Century B.C., when it was made clear by Erasistratos. ~ James Henry Breasted

Increase Mather, President of Harvard University, in his treatise on Remarkable Providences, insists that the smell of herbs alarms the Devil and that medicine expels him. Such beliefs have probably even now not wholly disappeared from among us. ~ James Henry Breasted

When the injured humerus is accompanied by a serious rupture of the overlying soft tissue the injury is regarded as fatal. ~ James Henry Breasted

Speechlessness, however, affirmed in the diagnosis, is carefully based on the facts of the examination, as we see by rendering the statements concerned, just as they stand in examination and diagnosis: If thou examinest a man having a wound in the temple, ... ; if thou ask of him concerning his malady and he speak not to thee; ... ; thou shouldst say concerning him, 'One having a wound in his temple, ... (and) he is speechless'. ~ James Henry Breasted

Very often conditions are recorded as observable "under thy fingers" [ ... ] Among such observations it is important to notice that the pulsations of the human heart are observed. ~ James Henry Breasted

[ ... ] the success of Egyptian surgery in setting broken bones is very fully demonstrated in the large number of well-joined fractures found in the ancient skeletons. ~ James Henry Breasted

Here we see the word "brain" occurring for the first time in human speech, as far as it is known to us; and in discussing injuries affecting the brain, we note the surgeon's effort to delimit his terms as he selects for specialization a series of common and current words to designate three degrees of injury to the skull indicated in modern surgery by the terms "fracture", "compound fracture," and "compound comminuted fracture," all of which the ancient commentator carefully explains. ~ James Henry Breasted

[ ... ] 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

I knew at university that medicine was just not for me. I saved many lives by not being a doctor! ~ Zubin Mehta

In medicine the use of the knife is often the kinder course. ~ Stefan Zweig

Sonnet V
I touch you as a lonely violin touches the suburbs of the faraway place
patiently the river asks for its share of the drizzle
and, bit by bit, a tomorrow passing in poems approaches
so I carry faraway's land and it carries me on travel's road
On a mare made of your virtues, my soul weaves
a natural sky made of your shadows, one chrysalis at a time.
I am the son of what you do in the earth, son of my wounds
that have lit up the pomegranate blossoms in your closed-up gardens
Out of jasmine the night's blood streams white. Your perfume,
my weakness and your secret, follows me like a snakebite. And your hair
is a tent of wind autumn in color. I walk along with speech
to the last of the words a bedouin told a pair of doves
I palpate you as a violin palpates the silk of the faraway time
and around me and you sprouts the grass of an ancient place - anew ~ Mahmoud Darwish

The emergence of self-organized ecoranges generates the potential for highly adaptable responses to environmental perturbations that might affect that ecorange. Within that system, all the plants are continually communicating with each other, sending chemical communications along the mycelial network to other plants in the community. (Plants also speak using auditory signals through a complex sound-based language that is far more ancient than the human though it exists in a much subtler sound spectrum than our own.) ~ Stephen Harrod Buhner

Can a society in which thought and technique are scientific persist for a long period, as, for example, ancient Egypt persisted, or does it necessarily contain within itself forces which must bring either decay or explosion? ~ Bertrand Russell

Hopis have lived in America longer than anyone. We wanted to explore the concept of Earthly visitation through the eyes of people who have also witnessed the rapid evolution of modern culture. For us, their beliefs ring true on so many levels. Hopi prophecy speaks to the destiny of man...in a universe where we are not alone. ~ T.J. Wolf

The Hindus have worshipped from ancient times the baby Krishna in the arms of Virgin Devaki just as the Roman catholics [sic] worship Madona [sic] with baby Christ. ~ Swami Abhedananda

Augustine, who assumed that Genesis 1 was chapter 1 in a book that contained the literal words of God, and that Genesis 2 was the second chapter in the same book, put the two chapters together and read the latter as a sequel. Genesis 2, he assumed, described the fall from the perfection and original goodness of creation depicted in chapter 1. So almost inevitably the Christian scriptures from the fourth century on were interpreted against the background of this (mis) understanding.

The primary trouble with this theory was that by the fourth century of the Common Era there were no Jews to speak of left in the Christian movement, and therefore the only readers and interpreters of the ancient Hebrew myths were Gentiles, who had no idea what these stories originally meant. Consequently, they interpreted them as perfection established by God in chapter 1, followed by perfection ruined by human beings in chapter 2. Why was that a problem? Well I, for one, have never known a Jewish scripture scholar to treat the Garden of Eden story in the same way that Gentiles treat it. Jews tend to see this story not as a narrative about sin entering the world, but as a parable about the birth of self-consciousness. It is, for the Jews, not a fall into sin, but a step into humanity. It is the birth of a new relationship with God, changing from master-servant to interdependent cooperation. The forbidden fruit was not from an apple tree, as so many who don't bother to read the text seem ~ John Shelby Spong

It's bizarre to me that you can have political commentators, sports commentators, weather commentators, but with medicine, people go, "You can't do that." ~ Drew Pinsky

They all think medicine should be magic, and they become mad at me when it's not. ~ Neal Shusterman

I have dwelt ever in realms apart from the visible world; spending my youth and adolescence in ancient and little-known books, and in roaming the fields and groves of the region near my ancestral home. I do not think that what I read in these books or saw in these fields and groves was exactly what other boys read and saw there; but of this I must say little, since detailed speech would but confirm those cruel slanders upon my intellect which I sometimes overhear from the whispers of the stealthy attendants around me. ~ H.P. Lovecraft

Is there a medical rule that requires doctors-office personnel to treat you as though you have the IQ of a Cheeto? ~ Dave Barry

They were written on cheap blue notebooks bought by poor women. I'm interested in folk tales in the way that medicine and magic in women's stories are all kind of combined. ~ Alice Hoffman

The deepest solace lies in understanding,
This ancient unseen stream,
A shudder before the beautiful ~ Tuomas Holopainen Of "Nightwish"

The power of faith can be a strong force, but the power of knowing is even stronger. ~ Luis Marques

There is a wildness in us, something magnificent, ancient and connect to each other. Though it's been nearly beaten out of us by society and this toxic demand on little girls to be good, nice, pretty and quiet, it's still very much alive in us ~ Scarlett Curtis

I gave up medicine. So I'll give up fashion ... I could be a colorist of spaceships. ~ Geoffrey Beene

I, too, head for the Baths of Caracalla,
thinking - with my old, magnificent
privilege of thinking ...
(And let there still be a god in me that thinks,
lost, weak, and childish,
yet whose voice is so human
it is almost a song.) Oh, to leave
this prison of poverty!
To be free of the yearning
that makes these ancient nights so splendid!
He who knows yearning, and he who does not,
have something in common: man's desires are humble. ~ Pier Paolo Pasolini

I have always been spurred on by my not finding expressed anywhere the kinds of perspectives that I thought these issues most perspicuously needed and deserved; but that is just another way of saying that Americans have overwhelmingly expunged from their public understanding the strongest and most clarifying resources out of ancient and traditional European cultures. By far we prefer our familiar and user-friendly parochialisms, and there is no percentage in trying to pry these pachydermal plates apart. ~ Kenny Smith

Let others praise ancient times; I am glad I was born in these. ~ Ovid

I began to hitchhike in something akin to geological time: slow, ancient, vast. ~ Tom Robbins

I started stem cells when I wanted to find a cure for my mother, who I loved very much, and western medicine was not able to cure her. If I had discovered stem cells a year before, I think that she would still be here with me. ~ Peter Nygard

The Christian Bible is a symbolic book, not a literal one. The one Christians know as Jesus was actually a symbol for the sun. Ancient sun worshippers believed the sun died at the end of the winter solstice and then three days later it would be reborn at the start of its cycle - December 25. ~ David Icke

Antiquity and modernity are cut from the same cloth. That is to say, our sense of things being 'ancient' is produced - both historically and in practice - by the sense that we ourselves are 'modern'. ~ David Wengrow

According to the saying of an ancient philosopher, one should eat to live, and not live to eat ~ Moliere

Coasted up the Adriatic, its shores swimming in an atmosphere of amber, rose, and aquamarine; we lay in wide land-locked harbours, we roamed through ancient and noble cities, ~ Kenneth Grahame

One current of continuity runs underneath all the abortive phases of my life. From childhood on I have been obliged to drop anything I was doing to run after any man who seemed to know a little more than I did about God ... I most want to write about: how a modern woman has sought the face of God-not the name nor the fame but the face [ital] of God-and what adventures came to meet her on this ancient human path. ~ Mary Antin

Some look like us, most look very different. No two worlds are exactly alike. But every world, no matter how alien or strange, is part of a vast mosaic that floats on an ocean of love. Here I'm only talking about the physical worlds. There are dimensions beyond those you can see with your eyes. There are the realms of the gods, the lands of the demons, the vast kingdoms of the angels. All these places are spoken about in ancient scriptures but somehow people have forgotten that they're true. ~ Christopher Pike

OEDIPUS:
Upon the murderer I invoke this curse-
whether he is one man and all unknown,
or one of many- may he wear out his life
in misery to miserable doom!
If with my knowledge he lives at my hearth
I pray that I myself may feel my curse.
On you I lay my charge to fulfill all this
for me, for the God, and for this land of ours destroyed and blighted, by the God forsaken. ~ Sophocles

Beautiful sunrise in the far away mountains, painting the wide horizon with vibrant warm colors, among the chill from the morning breeze. ~ Luis Marques

All the ancient histories, as one of our wits say, are just fables that have been agreed upon ~ Voltaire