George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw, known at his insistence simply as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic and polemicist whose influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from the 1880s to his death and beyond. He wrote more than sixty plays, including major works such as Man and Superman, Pygmalionand Saint Joan. With a range incorporating both contemporary satire and historical allegory, Shaw became the leading dramatist of his generation, and in 1925 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature...
NationalityIrish
ProfessionPlaywright
Date of Birth26 July 1856
CityDublin, Ireland
CountryIreland
Even the fact that doctors themselves die of the very diseases they profess to cure passes unnoticed. We do not shoot out our lips and shake our heads, saying, 'They save others: themselves they cannot save':
Nothing is more dangerous than a poor doctor: not even a poor employer or a poor landlord.
It is nearly 50 years since I was assured by a conclave of doctors that if I did not eat meat I should die of starvation.
..discussing vaccination with a doctor is like discussing vegetarianism with a butcher...
Let no one suppose that the words doctor and patient can disguise from the parties the fact that they are employer and employee.
Optimistic lies have such immense therapeutic value that a doctor who cannot tell them convincingly has mistaken his profession.
The doctor learns that if he gets ahead of the superstitions of his patients he is a ruined man; and the result is that he instinctively takes care not to get ahead of them.
As well consult a butcher on the value of vegetarianism as a doctor on the worth of vaccination.
Every doctor will allow a colleague to decimate a whole countryside sooner than violate the bond of professional etiquette by giving him away.
A serious illness or a death advertises the doctor exactly as a hanging advertises the barrister who defended the person hanged.
The test to which all methods of treatment are finally brought is whether they are lucrative to doctors or not.
The medical profession (is) a conspiracy to hide its own shortcomings. No doubt the same may be said of all professions. They are all conspiracies against the laity... (U)ntil there is a practicable alternative to blind trust in the doctor, the truth about the doctor is so terrible that we dare not face it.
Nobody supposes that doctors are less virtuous than judges; but a judge whose salary and reputation depended on whether the verdict was for plaintiff or defendant, prosecutor or prisoner, would be as little trusted as a general in the pay of the enemy.
When men die of disease they are said to die from natural causes. When they recover (and mostly they do) the doctor gets the credit of curing them.