“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.”
— Lewis Thomas
Author: Lewis Thomas
Category: medical
Tags: medical, Lewis Thomas
“The dilemma of modern medicine, and the underlying central flaw in medical education and, most of all, in the training of interns, is the irresistible drive to do something, anything. It is expected by patients and too often agreed to by their doctors, in the face of ignorance.”
— Lewis Thomas
Author: Lewis Thomas
Category: medical
Tags: medical, Lewis Thomas
“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.”
— Lewis Thomas
Author: Lewis Thomas
Category: knowledge
Tags: knowledge, Lewis Thomas
“Ants are so much like human beings as to be an embarrassment. They farm fungi, raise aphids as livestock, launch armies into war, use chemical sprays to alarm and confuse enemies, capture slaves, engage in child labour, exchange information ceaselessly. They do everything but watch television.”
— Lewis Thomas
Author: Lewis Thomas
Category: war
Tags: war, Lewis Thomas
“The great secret of doctors, known only to their wives, but still hidden from the public, is that most things get better by themselves; most things, in fact, are better in the morning.”
— Lewis Thomas
Author: Lewis Thomas
Category: great
Tags: great, Lewis Thomas
“The cloning of humans is on most of the lists of things to worry about from Science, along with behaviour control, genetic engineering, transplanted heads, computer poetry and the unrestrained growth of plastic flowers.”
— Lewis Thomas
Author: Lewis Thomas
Category: poetry
Tags: poetry, Lewis Thomas
“The central task of science is to arrive, stage by stage, at a clearer comprehension of nature, but this does not at all mean, as it is sometimes claimed to mean, a search for mastery over nature.”
— Lewis Thomas
Author: Lewis Thomas
Category: nature
Tags: nature, Lewis Thomas
“The dilemma of modern medicine, and the underlying central flaw in medical education and, most of all, in the training of interns, is the irresistible drive to do something, anything. It is expected by patients and too often agreed to by their doctors, in the face of ignorance.”
— Lewis Thomas
Author: Lewis Thomas
Category: education
Tags: education, Lewis Thomas
“The cloning of humans is on most of the lists of things to worry about from Science, along with behaviour control, genetic engineering, transplanted heads, computer poetry and the unrestrained growth of plastic flowers.”
— Lewis Thomas
Author: Lewis Thomas
Category: science
Tags: science, Lewis Thomas
“Music is the effort we make to explain to ourselves how our brains work. We listen to Bach transfixed because this is listening to a human mind.”
— Lewis Thomas
Author: Lewis Thomas
Category: music
Tags: music, Lewis Thomas
“I suggest that the introductory courses in science, at all levels from grade school through college, be radically revised. Leave the fundamentals, the so-called basics, aside for a while, and concentrate the attention of all students on the things that are not known.”
— Lewis Thomas
Author: Lewis Thomas
Category: science
Tags: science, Lewis Thomas