Mark Twain Quotes

People call me an optimist, but I'm really an appreciator ... years ago, I was cured of a badly infected finger with antibiotics when once my doctor could have recommended only a hot water soak or, eventually, surgery.... When I was six years old and had scarlet fever, the first of the miracle drugs, sulfanilamide, saved my life. I'm grateful for computers and photocopiers ... I appreciate where we've come from.

If the history of medicine is told through the stories of doctors, it is because their contributions stand in place of the more substantive heroism of their patients.

Ann Sjoerdsma has successfully blended the fascinating story of her illustrious father's scientific achievements [in wide-ranging] drug research, with an enjoyable historic account of the astounding progress of biomedical science during the second half of the 20th century.

For most of the rise of modern medicine, the brain was a really unknown zone and was all based in guesswork. Well, that's all changing. And the opioid recovery is a very good example of the scale of change we're seeing.

WhenIWasYourAge: People were never "living with their disease." We cured them. Or they died from it.

Even for the diseases we don't focus on, cancer, heart disease, you're going to be way better off being sick 10 years from now than any time in the past.

If our society continues to support basic research on how living organisms function, it is likely that my great grandchildren will be spared the agony of losing family members to most types of cancer.

As medical research continues and technology enables new breakthroughs, there will be a day when malaria and most all major deadly diseases are eradicated on Earth.

We're living through a paradigm shift. People are going to look back at us and say, 'They used to cut people's legs off.' Then they'll just give an injection and the blood flow will be restored and the limb saved.

Medical knowledge and technical savvy are biodegradable. The sort of medicine that was practiced in Boston or New York or Atlanta fifty years ago would be as strange to a medical student or intern today as the ceremonial dance of a !Kung San tribe would seem to a rock festival audience in Hackensack.

Huge sums are invested globally in medical research and development - and with good reason.

New drugs and surgical techniques offer promise in the fight against cancer, Alzheimer's, tuberculosis, AIDS, and a host of other life-threatening diseases. Animal research has been, and continues to be, fundamental to advancements in medicine.

The only difference between my work and the work of the whole medical profession is that I think we're in striking distance of keeping people so healthy that at 90 they'll carry on waking up in the same physical state as they were at the age of 30, and their probability of not waking up one morning will be no higher than it was at the age of 30.

In the history of medicine, it is not always the great scientist or the learned doctor who goes forward to discover new fields, new avenues, new ideas.

It's the best time ever to be a doctor because you can heal and treat conditions that were untreatable even a few years ago.

When we benefit from CT scanners, M.R.I. devices, pacemakers and arterial stents, we can immediately appreciate how science affects the quality of our lives.

I want to see cancer cured in my lifetime. It might be.

I'm old enough to remember when the polio vaccine was still new. Also, it hadn't been that long since most people who caught pneumonia died from it. These medical breakthroughs were practically miracles.

Our healthcare system has seen some of the greatest achievements of the human intellect since we started recording history: We're developing incredible devices and implantables to improve the quantity and quality of people's lives.

When I was young, having a heart bypass was, 'Woooh!'

My diagnosis had been discussed in almost every major medical journal, including the 'New England Journal of Medicine,' and 'The New York Times.'

We once thought of cancer as an incurable disease; then we started treating it.

I come from an era when if you are told that you need a triple heart bypass it sounds pretty terminal. But I think it's quite a normal operation these days.

I don't expect the human race to progress in too many areas. However, having a child with an ear infection makes one hugely grateful for antibiotics.

Every cent that goes to research is changing the lives of patients and their families right now.