Martin H. Fischer

Martin Henry Fischer (10 November 1879 – 19 January 1962) was a German-born American physician and author. He is most famous for his teachings on the art and practice of medicine, including the famed quotation often recited on the first day of medical school, "A doctor must work eighteen hours a day and seven days a week. If you cannot console yourself to this, get out of the profession."

A doctor must work eighteen hours a day and seven days a week. If you cannot console yourself to this, get out of the profession.

Quotes

• You must learn to talk clearly. The jargon of scientific terminology which rolls off your tongues is mental garbage.
  • As quoted in ‪Encore : A Continuing Anthology‬ (December 1943) edited by Smith Dent, "Fischerisms" p. 709

• A conclusion is the place where you got tired thinking.
  • As quoted in ‪Encore : A Continuing Anthology‬ (March 1945) edited by Smith Dent, "Fischerisms" p. 309

• Knowledge is a process of piling up facts; wisdom lies in their simplification.
  • As quoted in ‪Encore : A Continuing Anthology‬ (March 1945) edited by Smith Dent, "Fischerisms" p. 309

• A machine has value only as it produces more than it consumes — so check your value to the community.
  • As quoted in Quote Unquote (A Handbook of Quotations) (2005) by M. P. Singh, p. 86

Fischerisms (1944)

Edited by Howard Fabing and Ray Marr

* A doctor must work eighteen hours a day and seven days a week. If you cannot console yourself to this, get out of the profession.

• " Any man who does not make himself proficient in at least two languages other than his own is a fool"

• A good teacher must know the rules; a good pupil, the exceptions.

• Diagnosis is not the end, but the beginning of practice.

• Don't despise empiric truth. Lots of things work in practice for which the laboratory has never found proof.

• Facts are not science — as the dictionary is not literature.

• Here's good advice for practice: go into partnership with nature; she does more than half the work and asks none of the fee.

• The great doctors all got their education off dirt pavements and poverty — not marble floors and foundations.

• The specialist is a man who fears other subjects.

• None of the great discoveries was made by a "specialist" or a "researcher".

• Research has been called good business, a necessity, a gamble, a game. It is none of these — it's a state of mind.

• There is only one reason why men become addicted to drugs — they are weak men. Only strong men are cured, and they cure themselves.

• When a man lacks mental balance in pneumonia he is said to be delirious. When he lacks mental balance without the pneumonia, he is pronounced insane by all smart doctors.

• Whenever ideas fail, men invent words.