Medicine

Works to read

• The Canon of Medicine, Book I by Ibn Sina (Avicenna), c. 1025
• On Medicine by Aulus Cornelius Celsus, c. 30 CE
• Sts. Cosmas and Damian: Physician Saints by Jacobus de Voragine; Byzantine miracle tradition, late antique cult; medieval miracle collections
• An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine by Claude Bernard, 1865
• Jacobson v. Massachusetts by Supreme Court of the United States, 1905
• All's Well That Ends Well by William Shakespeare, c. 1604 · Great Books
• Galen: Selected Works by Galen, c. 160–210 CE · Great Books
• On the Magnet (De Magnete) by William Gilbert, 1600 · Great Books
• The Misanthrope and Other Plays by Molière, 1666 (The Misanthrope) · Great Books
• A Treatise on the Smallpox and Measles by Abu Bakr al-Razi (Rhazes), c. 910
• St. Thomas Becket and the Canterbury Miracles by Edward Grim; Benedict of Peterborough; William of Canterbury tradition, 1170-1173; miracle collections late 12th century
• Slaughter-House Cases by Supreme Court of the United States, 1873

Passages

• when he takes his medicine, a cartload of hellebore will not be too much for him

  — Plato, Euthydemus

• the office of medicine is but to tune this curious harp of man’s body and to reduce it to harmony

  — Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning

• it is not the function of medicine simply to make a man quite healthy, but to put him as far as may be on the road to health

  — Aristotle, Rhetoric

• When we are well we wonder what we would do if we were ill, but when we are ill we take medicine cheerfully; the illness persuades us to do so

  — Blaise Pascal, Pensees

• I’ve studied now Philosophy And Jurisprudence, Medicine,— And even, alas! Theology,— From end to end, with labor keen; And here, poor fool! with all my lore I stand, no wiser than before

  — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, Part One

• Thus, to save a life, it may not only be allowable, but a duty, to steal, or take by force, the necessary food or medicine, or to kidnap, and compel to officiate, the only qualified medical practitioner

  — John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism

Passages are verified quotations from the library that use one of these words: medicine, physician, disease, cure, health. Sentences under “From the texts” are copied word for word from the full texts in this library. Read each in its context on the work's page.