At that moment, before I could open my mouth, a patient stood up, pointed to the leg, and exclaimed ecstatically:
“You, doctor, are the Holy Father.”
The doctor smiled at her with tenebrous gentleness:
“The Holy Father?”
“You, doctor, are the Holy Father, repeated the patient, “and the other doctors civilian governors.”
The doctor’s mouth opened in immense satisfaction:
“This case is an excellent teaching tool. An excellent teaching tool. Don’t change her therapy and keep her for my class.
António Lobo Antunes: Knowledge from hell
Earlier quotes
There is not a profession in the world as does not have its particular humour. I regret that that of medical men is perhaps the grossest of them all. A proximity to the suffering of others produces a drollery more cruel than truly comic. It begins as a defence against horrors but soon becomes merely a way with them.
(Andrew Miller: Ingenious pain)
Suddenly a statement came to mind that I once read somewhere when I was a student, perhaps by Stendhal, and which I then wrote down in one of my notebooks because I thought it was very profound: ‘Man gets used to everything, except for happiness and rest.’ In essence, these words express the same thing as the physician’s reflection: ‘A healthy person is a sick person who does not know it.’
Georges Simenon, Big Bob