Quotations on Youth, Age, Death, Physicians, and Medicine

Posted May 14, 2008
"Don't be afraid that your life will end, be afraid that it will never begin."
— ?

Posted April 15, 2008
"I refuse to admit I'm more than fifty-two, even if that does make my sons illegitimate."
— Lady Nancy Astor (1879 - 1964)

Posted April 1, 2008
From Dante's The Divine Comedy

Canto XXV
As when, for ease of labour, or to shun
Suspected peril, at a whistle's breath,
The oars, erewhile dash'd frequent in the
wave, All rest: the flamy circle at that voice
So rested; and the mingling sound was still,
Which from the trinal band, soft-breathing, rose.
I turn'd, but ah! how trembled in my thought, When, looking at my side again to see Beatrice, I descried her not; although, Not distant, on the happy coast she stood.
— Dante Alighieri (1265 - 1321)

Posted March 3, 2008
"Death? let it come when it will, whether it smite but a part or the whole:

Fly, you tell me - fly! But whither shall I fly? Can any man cast me beyond the limits of the World? It may not be! And withersoever I go, there shall I still find Sun, Moon, and Stars; there shall I find dreams, and omens, and converse with the Gods!"
— Epictetus, Greek, b. circa 50 AD Stoic philosopher

Posted February 12, 2008
"It is now known that elders, especially those in skilled nursing facilities, have an extremely high prevalence of Vitamin D deficiency. Vitamin D supplementation is thought to have effects on skeletal, muscle and organs in addition to bone metabolism, and supplementation in the elderly not only improves bone mineral density but also decreases the risk of falls. A recent meta-analysis of 29 randomized trials demonstrated a reduction in fractures in patients over the age of 50 who were given calcium and Vitamin D (at least 800 IU/day). The data was not convincing for patients who only received 400 IU Vitamin D per day (the amount in a standard multivitamin)."
— Debra Bynum, MD, UNC-CH Assistant Professor of Medicine, Division of Geriatric Medicine

Posted January 16, 2008
"Contact with older people by second-year medical students has a significantly favourable effect on their attitudes towards older people. Students exposed to other client groups did not show the same improvement in attitude… This effect was more pronounced in students who saw older people in the community rather than in rest homes… Attitudes towards older people amongst students completing the fourth-year course were generally better….
Any difference in attitudes for second-year students who saw older rather than younger people had disappeared by the end of the fourth-year course."
— Wilkinson TJ, Gower S, Sainsbury R. “The Earlier the Better: The Effect of Early Community Contact on the Attitudes of Medical Students to Older People." Medical Education. Vol. 36, No. 6, 540–542.

Posted November 13, 2007
"In North Carolina, the number of adults 65 and older is expected to reach more than two million by 2030, leaving the state scarcely prepared to deal with the health needs of this segment of the population. For each 6,282 older patients in the state, there is only one geriatrician. Of the 650,000 physicians practicing in the nation, less than 9,000 are certified in geriatrics."
— from the UNC-CH 2003 press release announcing the awarding to UNC of the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation Grant.

Posted October 30, 2007
"Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old."
— Franz Kafka (1883 - 1924)

Posted October 5, 2007
"It spite of illness, in spite even of the archenemy sorrow, one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in a small way."
— Edith Wharton (1862 - 1937)

Posted September 14, 2007
"To me, old age is always fifteen years older than I am."
— Bernard M. Baruch (1870 - 1965)

Posted September 5, 2007
During John McCain's question-and-answer session on September 4, 2007, at Concord High School in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, one student rose and asked a pointed question about McCain's age, 71: "If elected, you'd be older than Ronald Reagan, making you the oldest president. Do you ever worry that, like, you might die in office or get Alzheimer's or some other disease that might affect your judgment?"

Posted August 22, 2007
"Numerous other studies, both in the United States and abroad, have confirmed the health-damaging impact of hostility. On average, persons with a cynical mistrust of others, more frequent angry feelings toward others in everyday lie, and more frequent open expression of this anger through aggressive treatment of others die sooner."
— Virginia Williams and Redford Williams. LifeSkills. New York: Random House, 1997.

Posted August 7, 2007
"True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country."
— Kurt Vonnegut (1922 - 2007)

Posted July 11, 2007
"Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion."
— Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

Posted June 29, 2007
"An entire mythology has grown up around the process of dying. Like most mythologies, it is based upon the inborn psychological need that all humankind shares. The mythologies of death are meant to combat fear on the one hand and its opposite – wishes – on the other. They are meant to serve us by disarming our terror about what the reality may be. While so many of us hope for a swift death or a death during sleep “so I won’t suffer,” we at the same time cling to an image of our final moments that combines grace with a sense of closure; we need to believe in a clear-minded process in which the summation of life takes place – either that or a perfect lapse into agony-free unconsciousness."
— Sherwin Nuland
How We Die: Reflections on Life’s Final Chapter


Posted June 7, 2007
“Instruction in medicine is like the culture of the productions of the earth. For our natural disposition is, as it were, the soil; the tenets of our teacher are, as it were, the seed; instruction in youth is like the planting of the seed in the ground at the proper season; the place where the instruction is communicated is like the food imparted to vegetables by the atmosphere; diligent study is like the cultivation of the fields; and it is time which imparts strength to all things and brings them to maturity.”
— Hippocrates b. 460 BC, d. circa 360 BC. Hutchins, Robert Maynard, ed. Great Books of the Western World. Vol. 10. Hippocrates, Galen. Hippocrates. “Hippocratic Writings.” Francis Adams, trans. Chicago: William Benton, 1952.

Posted May 2007
Every day that will pass you by
Every name that you won't recall
Everything that you made by hand
Everything that you know by heart

And I will try to connect
All the pieces you left
I will carry it on
And let you forget
And I'll remember the years
When you mind was clear
How the laughter and life
Filled up this silent house

— Finn/Natalie Maines/Martie Maguire/Emily Robison