The difficulty in life is the choice.
—George Moore
The Bending of the Bough
I have never had a money practice; it would have been impossible for me. But the actual calling on people, at all times and under all conditions, the coming to grips with the intimate conditions of their lives, when they were being born, when they were dying, watching them die, watching them get well when they were ill, has always absorbed me.
—William Carlos Williams, M.D. Autobiography
The close-up, reassuring, warm touch of the physician, the comfort and concern, the long, leisurely discussions … are disappearing from the practice of medicine, and this may turn out to be too great a loss. … If I were a medical student or an intern, just getting ready to begin, I would be more worried about this aspect of my future than anything else. I would be apprehensive that my real job, caring for sick people, might soon be taken away, leaving me with the quite different occupation of looking after machines. I would be trying to figure out ways to keep this from happening.
—Lewis Thomas, M.D.