A CODE OF ETHICAL BEHAVIOR FOR PATIENTS:

1. DO NOT EXPECT YOUR DOCTOR TO SHARE YOUR DISCOMFORT.
	Involvement with the patient's suffering might cause him to lose
	valuable scientific objectivity.

2. BE CHEERFUL AT ALL TIMES.
	Your doctor leads a busy and trying life and requires all the
	gentleness and reassurance he can get.

3. TRY TO SUFFER FROM THE DISEASE FOR WHICH YOU ARE BEING TREATED.
	Remember that your doctor has a professional reputation to uphold.
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A CODE OF ETHICAL BEHAVIOR FOR PATIENTS:

4. DO NOT COMPLAIN IF THE TREATMENT FAILS TO BRING RELIEF.
	You must believe that your doctor has achieved a deep insight into
	the true nature of your illness, which transcends any mere permanent
	disability you may have experienced.

5. NEVER ASK YOUR DOCTOR TO EXPLAIN WHAT HE IS DOING OR WHY HE IS DOING IT.
	It is presumptuous to assume that such profound matters could be
	explained in terms that you would understand.

6. SUBMIT TO NOVEL EXPERIMANTAL TREATMENT READILY.
	Though the surgery may not benefit you directly, the resulting
	research paper will surely be of widespread interest.
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A CODE OF ETHICAL BEHAVIOR FOR PATIENTS:

7. PAY YOUR MEDICAL BILLS PROMPTLY AND WILLINGLY.
	You should consider it a privilege to contribute, however modestly,
	to the well-being of physicians and other humanitarians.

8. DO NOT SUFFER FROM AILMENTS THAT YOU CANNOT AFFORD.
	It is sheer arrogance to contract illnesses that are beyond your means.

9. NEVER REVEAL ANY OF THE SHORTCOMINGS THAT HAVE COME TO LIGHT IN THE COURSE
   OF TREATMENT BY YOUR DOCTOR.
	The patient-doctor relationship is a privileged one, and you have a
	sacred duty to protect him from exposure.

10. NEVER DIE WHILE IN YOUR DOCTOR'S PRESENCE OR UNDER HIS DIRECT CARE.
	This will only cause him needless inconvenience and embarrassment.
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A distraught patient phoned her doctor's office.  "Was it true," the woman
inquired, "that the medication the doctor had prescribed was for the rest
of her life?"
	She was told that it was.  There was just a moment of silence before
the woman proceeded bravely on.  "Well, I'm wondering, then, how serious my
condition is.  This prescription is marked `NO REFILLS'".
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A doctor calls his patient to give him the results of his tests.  "I have
some bad news," says the doctor, "and some worse news."  The bad news is
that you only have six weeks to live."
	"Oh, no," says the patient.  "What could possibly be worse than that?"
	"Well," the doctor replies, "I've been trying to reach you since
last Monday."
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A woman physician has made the statement that smoking is neither
physically defective nor morally degrading, and that nicotine, even
when indulged to in excess, is less harmful than excessive petting."
		-- Purdue Exponent, Jan 16, 1925
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A woman went into a hospital one day to give birth.  Afterwards, the doctor
came to her and said, "I have some... odd news for you."
	"Is my baby all right?" the woman anxiously asked.
	"Yes, he is," the doctor replied, "but we don't know how.  Your son
(we assume) was born with no body.  He only has a head."
	Well, the doctor was correct.  The Head was alive and well, though no
one knew how.  The Head turned out to be fairly normal, ignoring his lack of
a body, and lived for some time as typical a life as could be expected under
the circumstances.
	One day, about twenty years after the fateful birth, the woman got a
phone call from another doctor.  The doctor said, "I have recently perfected
an operation.  Your son can live a normal life now: we can graft a body onto
his head!"
	The woman, practically weeping with joy, thanked the doctor and hung
up.  She ran up the stairs saying, "Johnny, Johnny, I have a *wonderful*
surprise for you!"
	"Oh no," cried The Head, "not another HAT!"
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Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined.
		-- Samuel Goldwyn
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Aquavit is also considered useful for medicinal purposes, an essential
ingredient in what I was once told is the Norwegian cure for the common
cold.  You get a bottle, a poster bed, and the brightest colored stocking
cap you can find.  You put the cap on the post at the foot of the bed,
then get into bed and drink aquavit until you can't see the cap.  I've
never tried this, but it sounds as though it should work.
		-- Peter Nelson
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Better to use medicines at the outset than at the last moment.
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Certain old men prefer to rise at dawn, taking a cold bath and a long
walk with an empty stomach and otherwise mortifying the flesh.  They
then point with pride to these practices as the cause of their sturdy
health and ripe years; the truth being that they are hearty and old,
not because of their habits, but in spite of them.  The reason we find
only robust persons doing this thing is that it has killed all the
others who have tried it.
		-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
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As if you would call a physician, that is thought good for the cure of the
disease you complain of but is unacquainted with your body, and therefore may
put you in the way for a present cure but overthroweth your health in some
other kind; and so cure the disease and kill the patient.
		-- Francis Bacon
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Death has been proven to be 99% fatal in laboratory rats.
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Dental health is next to mental health.
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For my son, Robert, this is proving to be the high-point of his entire life
to date.  He has had his pajamas on for two, maybe three days now.  He has
the sense of joyful independence a 5-year-old child gets when he suddenly
realizes that he could be operating an acetylene torch in the coat closet
and neither parent [because of the flu] would have the strength to object.
He has been foraging for his own food, which means his diet consists
entirely of "food" substances which are advertised only on Saturday-morning
cartoon shows; substances that are the color of jukebox lights and that, for
legal reasons, have their names spelled wrong, as in New Creemy
Chok-'n'-Cheez Lumps o' Froot ("part of this complete breakfast").
		-- Dave Barry, "Molecular Homicide"
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God is dead and I don't feel all too well either....
		-- Ralph Moonen
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"Good health" is merely the slowest rate at which one can die.
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Happiness is good health and a bad memory.
		-- Ingrid Bergman
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Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying
of nothing.
		-- Redd Foxx
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His ideas of first-aid stopped short of squirting soda water.
		-- P. G. Wodehouse
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Human cardiac catheterization was introduced by Werner Forssman in 1929.
Ignoring his department chief, and tying his assistant to an operating
table to prevent her interference, he placed a ureteral catheter into
a vein in his arm, advanced it to the right atrium [of his heart], and
walked upstairs to the x-ray department where he took the confirmatory
x-ray film.  In 1956, Dr. Forssman was awarded the Nobel Prize.
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I get my exercise acting as pallbearer to my friends who exercise.
		-- Chauncey Depew
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I got the bill for my surgery.  Now I know what those doctors were
wearing masks for.
		-- James Boren
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	"I keep seeing spots in front of my eyes."
	"Did you ever see a doctor?"
	"No, just spots."
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If a person (a) is poorly, (b) receives treatment intended to make him better,
and (c) gets better, then no power of reasoning known to medical science can
convince him that it may not have been the treatment that restored his health.
		-- Sir Peter Medawar, "The Art of the Soluble"
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It is very vulgar to talk like a dentist when one isn't a dentist.
It produces a false impression.
		-- Oscar Wilde.
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It's not reality or how you perceive things that's important -- it's
what you're taking for it...
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Just because your doctor has a name for your condition doesn't mean he
knows what it is.
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Laetrile is the pits.
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My doctorate's in Literature, but it seems like a pretty good pulse to me.
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Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.
		-- Erma Bombeck
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New England Life, of course.  Why do you ask?
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