Do not meet or overtake a patient who is moving about in order to speak to him or to give him any message or letter. You might just as well give him a box on the ear. I have seen a patient fall flat on the ground who was standing when his nurse came into the room.

It is more important to know what sort of person has a disease than to know what sort of disease a person has.

The most important practical lesson that can be given to nurses is to teach them what to observe – how to observe – what symptoms indicate improvement – what the reverse – which are of importance – which are of none – which are the evidence of neglect – and of what kind of neglect.

My doctor told me I shouldn’t work out until I’m in better shape. I told him, ‚All right; don’t send me a bill until I pay you.‘

The very elements of what constitutes good nursing are as little understood for the well as for the sick. The same laws of health or of nursing, for they are in reality the same, obtain among the well as among the sick.

Keep a watch also on the faults of the patients, which often make them lie about the taking of things prescribed.

Extreme remedies are very appropriate for extreme diseases.

I am dying from the treatment of too many physicians.

The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.

It may seem a strange principle to enunciate as the very first requirement in a hospital that it should do the sick no harm.

Wise and humane management of the patient is the best safeguard against infection.

Everything you do in a patient’s room, after he is ‚put up‘ for the night, increases tenfold the risk of his having a bad night. But, if you rouse him up after he has fallen asleep, you do not risk – you secure him a bad night.

If a patient is cold, if a patient is feverish, if a patient is faint, if he is sick after taking food, if he has a bed-sore, it is generally the fault not of the disease, but of the nursing.

I told the doctor I broke my leg in two places. He told me to quit going to those places.

The doctor who diagnosed me with ALS, or motor neuron disease, told me that it would kill me in two or three years.