"Between animal and human medicine, there is no dividing line—nor should there be."
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1856 (Quoted in: Klauder JV: Interrelations of human and veterinary medicine. N Engl J Med 1958, 258:170-177)Rudolf Virchow
» Rudolf Virchow - all quotes »
"In a dynamic, rather than static, view of revolution, there is no absolute 'before' or 'after,' with the taking of power as the dividing line."
Paulo Freire
The critical sense and sceptical attitude of the Hippocratic school laid the foundations of modern medicine on broad lines, and we owe to it: first, the emancipation of medicine from the shackles of priestcraft and of caste; secondly, the conception of medicine as an art based on accurate observation, and as a science, an integral part of the science of man and of nature; thirdly, the high moral ideals, expressed in that most "memorable of human documents" (Gomperz), the Hippocratic oath; and fourthly, the conception and realization of medicine as the profession of a cultivated gentleman.
William Osler
MAN IS FUNDAMENTALLY AN ANIMAL. Animals, as distinct from man, are not machine-like, not sadistic; their societies, within the same species, are incomparably more peaceful than those of man. The basic question, then is: What has made the animal, man, degenerate into a machine?
When I say "animal," I do not mean anything bad, cruel or "base"; I am stating a biological fact. Man has developed the peculiar concept that he is not an animal at all, but, well — man; a creature which long since has shed that which is "bad," which is "animal." He demarcates himself in all possible ways from the bad animal and points, in proof of his "being better," to culture and civilization which distinguish him from the animal. He shows, in his whole behavior, his "theories of values," his moral philosophies, his "monkey trials" and such, that he does not want to be reminded of the fact that basically he is an animal, an animal, furthermore, which has much more in common with the "animal" than with that being which he asserts to be and dreams of being. The theory of the German Übermensch has this origin. Man shows by his maliciousness, his inability to live in peace with his kind, his wars, that what distinguishes him from the other animals is only his unbounded sadism and the mechanical trinity of the authoritarian concept of life, mechanistic science and the machine. If one looks at the results of civilization as they present themselves over long periods of time, one finds that these contentions of man are not only erroneous; more than that, they seem to be made expressly for the purpose of making man forget that he is an animal.Wilhelm Reich
People rag on western medicine a lot for its disregard of indirect causalities and holism, for its antisceptic deconstructivism, for its blindness to things like the union of mind and body, and for its proclivity for post-facto treatment...But these criticisms notwithstanding, modern medicine is the accumulation of years and years of human effort to taxonomically observe, understand and explain an enormous set of conditions within a massively complex, underspecified system. To me, this is impressive. Also, they use cool phrases like "the radiolucent lungs" and "ligamentous laxity."
Nat Friedman
The attitude of the average person to the world they live in is completely selfish. When I take people round to see my animals, one of the first questions they ask (unless the animal is cute and appealing) is, "what use is it?" by which they mean, "what use is it to them?" To this one can reply "What use is the Acropolis?" Does a creature have to be of direct material use to mankind in order to exist? By and large, by asking the question "what use is it?" you are asking the animal to justify its existence without having justified your own.
Gerald Durrell
Virchow, Rudolf
Virilio, Paul
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