I left a pause. ‘You sound like a certain kind of surgeon. A lot more interested in the operation than the patient.’ ‘I should not like to be in the hands of a surgeon who did not take that view.
We want progress in medicine to be clear and unequivocal, but of course it rarely is. Every new treatment has gaping unknowns - for both patients and society - and it can be hard to decide what do do about them.
Why do we always think our pain will be less if we can make others suffer more?
No one looks at your hands to see how much they shake when you are interviewed to be a surgeon. The physical skills required are no greater than for writing cursive script. If an operation requires so much skill only a few surgeons can do it, you mod...
[first lines] Lt. Col. Henry Braymore Blake: Radar. Cpl. Walter 'Radar' O'Reilly: Yes, sir. I'll get ahold of Major Burns... Lt. Col. Henry Braymore Blake: I want you to get a hold of Major Burns... Cpl. Walter 'Radar' O'Reilly: ...Tell him to hold a...
Surgeon Maj. Reynolds: You know what you've got there, my malingering Hector? Pte. Henry Hook: No, sir. Hook's the name, sir. Surgeon Maj. Reynolds: You've got a fine glistening boil, my friend. There's one glistening boil for every soldier in Africa...
One American in seven has no coverage, and one in three younger than sixty-five will lose coverage at some point in the next two years. These are people who aren't poor or old enough to qualify for government programs but whose jobs aren't good enoug...
To become a doctor, you spend so much time in the tunnels of preparation--head down, trying not to screw up, just going from one day to the next--that it is a shock to find yourself at the other end, with someone shaking your hand and offering you a ...
I've had opportunities before to run for office - the Republicans recruited me when I was surgeon general, to run for Congress, to run against Gov. Napolitano. But I didn't feel it was my calling... I felt, 'Well, I'm flattered, but I really would ra...
C. Everett 'Chic' Koop became U.S. Surgeon General under President Reagan. He was a world renowned pediatric surgeon who had a tumultuous Senate confirmation process due to partisanship. Chic took office in January 1982, a time of 'tobacco wars' and ...
At heart, I'm a reconstructive surgeon.
The possibilities and probabilities are all we have to work with in medicine, though. What we are drawn to in this imperfect science, what we in fact covet in our way, is the alterable moment-the fragile but crystalline opportunity for one's know-how...
My father, for whose skills as a surgeon I have the deepest respect, says, "The operation with the best outcome is the one you decide not to do." Knowing when not to operate, knowing when I am in over my head, knowing when to call for the assistance ...
People underestimate the importance of dilligence as a virtue. No doubt it has something to do with how supremely mundane it seems. It is defined as "the constant and earnest effort to accomplish what is undertaken."... Understood, however, as the pr...
The striking thing is that WHO doesn't really have the authority to do any of this. It can't tell governments what to do. It hires no vaccinators, distributes no vaccine. It is a small Geneva bureaucracy run by several hundred international delegates...
As a heart surgeon I am on constant call, and when not researching or giving lectures, I like to be with my family.
Growing old gracefully used to begin at about 35, but today women prefer to 'stay young gratefully' with thanks to designers, beauticians and plastic surgeons.
We look for medicine to be an orderly field of knowledge and procedure. But it is not. It is an imperfect science, an enterprise of constantly changing knowledge, uncertain information, fallible individuals, and at the same time lives on the line. Th...
I met the surgeon general - he offered me a cigarette.
I'm very lucky in that I have a good cosmetic surgeon.
Surgeons can cut out everything except cause.