The Aword

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Quotes on Diagnosis

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Quotes on diagnoses


“Just a hundred years ago, journalist and acerbic social critic Ambrose Bierce defined the word ‘diagnosis’ in his Devil’s Dictionary  as ‘A physician’s forecast of disease by [taking] the patient’s pulse and purse’. And that was true for most of human history” (from TV show House)

“For each ailment that doctors cure with medications (as I am told they do occasionally succeed in doing) they produce ten others in healthy individuals by inoculating them with that pathogenic agent a thousand times more virulent than all the microbes- the idea that they are ill”  Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way

“Patients seek a diagnosis that fits their experience” Amanda C de C Williams (Psychologist)

“Plenty of people are still dying of diseases which other people do not believe” (DR MNC Dukes)

“Clinical diagnoses are important since they give a doctor a certain orientation; but they do not help the patient. The crucial thing is the story, for it alone shows the human background and the human suffering and only at that point can the doctor’s therapy begin to operate.” Carl Jung