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  • Abraham Verghese Quotes   84
  • What we need in medical schools is not to teach empathy, as much as to preserve it. The process of learning huge volumes of information about disease, of learning a specialised language, can ironically make one lose sight of the patient one came to serve; empathy can be replaced by cynicism.
  • 5 years ago



    Tags : Abraham Verghese Quotes , School Quotes , Sight Quotes
  • For one who has an interest in the body as text, airports are treasure troves of information. It seems almost un-American to enjoy delays, and perhaps enjoy is not the best word, but certainly a delayed flight, if it does nothing else, allows one the opportunity to make prolonged observations about one's fellow travelers.
  • 5 years ago



    Tags : Abraham Verghese Quotes , Opportunity Quotes , Airports Quotes
  • I think we learn from medicine everywhere that it is, at its heart, a human endeavor, requiring good science but also a limitless curiosity and interest in your fellow human being, and that the physician-patient relationship is key; all else follows from it.
  • 5 years ago



    Tags : Abraham Verghese Quotes , Heart Quotes , Thinking Quotes
  • A beautiful literary collection that tells of today's country doctor, somewhat removed from our romantic black-bag image of days gone by, but still fulfilling an essential need in caring for spread-out populations. At times, with today's advances in technology, medicine in rural America looks very like it does in America's cities, but the variety of practices is enormous. The Country Doctor Revisited captures the trials and tribulations of medicine, but also the satisfaction and the extraordinary rewards that come to those who embrace such a practice.
  • 5 years ago



    Tags : Abraham Verghese Quotes , Beautiful Quotes , Country Quotes
  • In America, we have always taken it as an article of faith that we 'battle' cancer; we attack it with knives, we poison it with chemotherapy or we blast it with radiation. If we are fortunate, we 'beat' the cancer. If not, we are posthumously praised for having 'succumbed after a long battle.'
  • 5 years ago



    Tags : Abraham Verghese Quotes , Cancer Quotes , Taken Quotes
  • Rituals, anthropologists will tell us, are about transformation. The rituals we use for marriage, baptism or inaugurating a president are as elaborate as they are because we associate the ritual with a major life passage, the crossing of a critical threshold, or in other words, with transformation.
  • 5 years ago



    Tags : Abraham Verghese Quotes , Baptism Quotes , President Quotes
  • We have the sense that medical students come to medicine with a great capacity to understand the suffering of patients. And then by the end of the third year they completely lose that ability, partly because we teach them the specialized language of medicine.
  • 5 years ago



    Tags : Abraham Verghese Quotes , Years Quotes , Medicine Quotes
  • According to Shiva, life is in the end about fixing holes. Shiva didn't speak in metaphors. fixing holes is precisely what he did. Still, it's an apt metaphor for our profession. But there's another kind of hole, and that is the wound that divides family. Sometimes this wound occurs at the moment of birth, sometimes it happens later. We are all fixing what is broken. It is the task of a lifetime. We'll leave much unfinished for the next generation.
  • 5 years ago



    Tags : Abraham Verghese Quotes , Broken Quotes , Tasks Quotes
  • This is my life, I thought...I have excised the cancer from my past, cut it out; I have crossed the high plains, descended into the desert, traversed oceans, and planted my feet in new soil; I have been the apprentice, paid my dues, and have just become master of my ship. But when I look down, why do I see the ancient, tarred, mud-stained slippers that I buried at the start of the journey still stuck to my feet?
  • 5 years ago



    Tags : Abraham Verghese Quotes , Cancer Quotes , Ocean Quotes