A physician is obligated to consider more than a diseased organ, more even than the whole man - he must view the man in his world.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of understanding a patient in the context of their entire life and environment, not just their medical condition.
Harvey Cushing’s quote highlights the need for physicians to take a holistic approach when treating patients. Rather than merely focusing on the physical symptoms or the specific illness, doctors should consider the broader context of a patient's life, including their social circumstances and personal experiences. This perspective fosters a deeper understanding of health and well-being, recognizing that medical care is intertwined with a person's environment and individual world.
In practice
During a medical conference when discussing patient-centered care.
In these days when science is clearly in the saddle and when our knowledge of disease is advancing at a breathless pace, we are apt to forget that not all can ride and that he also serves who waits and who applies what the horseman discovers.
I would like to see the day when somebody would be appointed surgeon somewhere who had no hands, for the operative part is the least part of the work.
Scientists have power by virtue of the respect commanded by the discipline... We live with poets and politicians, preachers and philosophers. All have their ways of knowing, and all are valid in their proper domain. The world is too complex and interesting for one way to hold all the answers.
All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue, and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter.
Under observation, we act less free, which means we effectively are less free.
The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired. Only after death, only in solitude, does a man’s true nature emerge. In death, as on the chimney sweep’s Saturday night, the soot gets washed from his body.
Our citizenship in the United States is our national character. Our citizenship in any particular state is only our local distinction. By the latter we are known at home, by the former to the world. Our great title is AMERICANS.
If we do wrong and no harm comes of it, we are not thereby justified. If we did evil and good came of it, the evil would be just as evil. It is not the result of the action, but the action itself which God weighs.
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