Doctor Jokes

Breathless Visitor: Doctor, can you help me? My name is Jones—

Doctor: No, I'm sorry; I simply can't do anything for that.

"My dear sir, it's a good thing you came to me when you did."

"Why, Doc? Are you broke?"

First Doctor: I operated on him for appendicitis.

Second Doctor: What was the matter with him?

"Doctor," said the friend, stopping him on the street, "what do you take for a heavy cold?"

"A fee," replied the doctor, softly, and he passed on.

Medical Student: What did you operate on that man for?

Eminent Surgeon: Two hundred dollars.

Medical Student: I mean what did he have?

Eminent Surgeon: Two hundred dollars.

The doctor stood by the bedside, and looked gravely down at the sick man.

"I cannot hide from you the fact that you are very ill," he said. "Is there anyone you would like to see?"

"Yes," said the sufferer faintly.

"Who is it?"

"Another doctor."

Fussy Lady Patient: I was suffering so much, doctor, that I wanted to die.

Doctor: You did right to call me in, dear lady.

During an exciting game of football a player had two fingers of his right hand badly smashed, and on his way home from the ground he dropped into the doctor's to have them attended to.

"Doctor," he asked anxiously, "when this hand of mine heals, will I be able to play the piano?"

"Certainly you will," the doctor assured him.

"Then you're a wonder, doctor. I never could before."

A victim of chronic bronchitis called on a well-known physician to be examined. The doctor, after careful questioning, assured the patient that the ailment would respond readily to treatment.

"You're so sure," the sufferer inquired, "I suppose you must have had a great deal of experience with this disease."

The physician smiled wisely, and answered in a most confidential manner:

"Why, my dear sir, I've had bronchitis myself for more than fifteen years."

A patient complained to the doctor that his hair was coming out.

"Won't you give me something to keep it in?" he begged.

"Take this," the doctor said kindly, and he handed the patient a pill box.

"Do you think I shall live until I'm ninety, doctor?"

"How old are you now?"

"Forty."

"Do you drink, gamble, smoke, or have you any vices of any kind?"

"No. I don't drink, I never gamble, I loathe smoking; in fact, I haven't any vices."

"Well, good heavens, what do you want to live another fifty years for?"

Doctor: You are a great deal better this morning, I see. You followed my directions, and that prescription did the business—what, you haven't taken any of it?

Patient: No; it says on the label, 'Keep the bottle tightly corked.'

The eight-year-old son of a Baltimore physician, together with a friend, was playing in his father's office, during the absence of the doctor, when suddenly the first lad threw open a closet door and disclosed to the terrified gaze of his little friend an articulated skeleton.

When the visitor had sufficiently recovered from his shock to stand the announcement, the doctor's son explained that his father was extremely proud of that skeleton.

"Is he?" asked the other. "Why?"

"I don't know," was the answer; "maybe it was his first patient."

Friend: What is the first thing you do when a man presents himself to you for consultation?

Doctor: I ask him if he has a car.

Friend: What do you learn from that?

Doctor: If he has one, I know he is wealthy—and if he hasn't, I know he is healthy.

"When I was a boy," said the gray-haired physician, who happened to be in a reminiscent mood, "I wanted to be a soldier; but my parents persuaded me to study medicine."

"Oh, well," rejoined the sympathetic druggist, "such is life. Many a man with wholesale aspirations has to content himself with a retail business."

In a confidential little talk to a group of medical students an eminent physician took up the extremely important matter of correct diagnosis of the maximum fee.

"The best rewards," he said, "come, of course, to the established specialist. For instance, I charge twenty-five dollars a call at the residence, ten dollars for an office consultation, and five dollars for a telephone consultation."

There was an appreciative and envious silence, and then a voice from the back of the theater, slightly thickened, spoke:

"Doc," it asked, "how much do you charge a fellow for passing you on the street?"

Patient: Tell me candidly, Doc, do you think I'll pull through?

Doctor: Oh, you're bound to get well—you can't help yourself. The Medical Record shows that out of one hundred cases like yours, one percent invariably recovers. I've treated ninety-nine cases, and every one of them died. Why, man alive, you can't die if you try! There's no humbug in statistics.

A quack doctor was holding forth about his "medicines" to a rural audience.

"Yes, gentlemen," he said, "I have sold these pills for over twenty-five years and never heard a word of complaint. Now, what does that prove?"

From a voice in the crowd came: "That dead men tell no tales."

Doctor (to patient): You've had a pretty close call. It's only your strong constitution that pulled you through.

Patient: Well, doctor, remember that when you make out your bill.

Patient (angrily): The size of your bill makes my blood boil.

Doctor: Then that will be $20 more for sterilizing your system.

Physician: Tell your wife not to worry about that slight deafness, as it is merely an indication of advancing years.

Mr. Meek: Doctor, would you mind telling her yourself?

"Why did papa have appendicitis and have to pay the doctor a thousand dollars, Mama?"

"It was God's will, dear."

"And was it because God was mad at papa or pleased with the doctor?"

"You must give up coffee and—"

"I never drink it, doctor."

"And stop smoking."

"I don't smoke."

"Humph! That's bad. If you haven't anything to give up, I'm afraid I can't do much for you."

Mrs. Knagg: Did the doctor ask to see your tongue?

Husband: No; I told him about yours and he ordered me away for a rest.

Mrs. Jenkins, a regular visitor in the doctor's consulting room, started on the long story of her troubles. The doctor endured it patiently and gave her another bottle. At last she started out, and the doctor was congratulating himself, when she stopped and exclaimed: "Why, doctor, you didn't look to see if my tongue was coated."

"I know it isn't," wearily replied the medical man. "You don't find grass on a race track."

A noted physician, particularly expeditious in examining and prescribing for his patients, was sought out by an army man whom he "polished off" in almost less than no time. As the patient was leaving, he shook hands heartily with the doctor and said:

"I am especially glad to have met you, as I have often heard my father, Colonel Blank, speak of you."

"What!" exclaimed the physician, "are you old Tom's son?"

"Certainly."

"My dear fellow," cried the doctor, "fling that infernal prescription in the fire and sit down and tell me what is the matter with you."

The physician turned from the telephone to his wife:

"I must hurry to Mrs. Jones' boy—he's sick."

"Is it serious?"

"Yes. I don't know what's the matter with him, but she has a book on what to do before the doctor comes. So I must hurry. Whatever it is, she mustn't do it."

"What caused the coolness between you and that young doctor? I thought you were engaged."

"His writing is rather illegible. He sent me a note calling for 10,000 kisses."

"Well?"

"I thought it was a prescription, and took it to the druggist to be filled."

The curator of the museum was classifying Egyptian curios. He observed a perplexed expression on the face of his young assistant.

"What seems to be the matter, Jones?" he asked. "Is there anything you don't understand?"

"Yes, sir," answered the helper. "Here is a papyrus on which the characters are so badly traced that they are indecipherable. How shall I classify it?"

"Let me see," said the curator, examining the piece. "Just call it a doctor's prescription in the time of Pharaoh."

Doctor: What? Troubled with sleeplessness? Eat something before going to bed.

Patient: Why, doctor, you once told me never to eat anything before going to bed.

Doctor (with dignity): Pooh, pooh! That was last January. Science has made enormous strides since then.

An old lady who had been introduced to a doctor who was also a professor in a university, felt somewhat puzzled as to how she would address the great man.

"Shall I call you 'doctor' or 'professor'?" she asked.

"Oh! Just as you wish," was the reply; "as a matter of fact, some people call me an old idiot."

"Indeed," she said, sweetly, "but then, they are people that know you."

"Hello! Is this you, mother, dear?"

"Yes, Sue? What is it? Something awful must have happened for you to call me up at this—"

"It's not so awful. But, dear, John hasn't been feeling well, and the doctor gave him pills to take every four hours. I've been sitting up to give them to him, and now it's about time for the medicine, and John has fallen asleep. Should I wake him?"

"I wouldn't if I were you. What is he suffering from?"

"Insomnia."

Dr. C—, who was called to the far end of Long Island to extract an appendix, missed the last train back, stayed overnight in a miserable hotel, and was waited on at breakfast by a sallow and cadaverous country girl. Said she:

"Boiled tongue, stewed kidneys, fried liver."

Said he:

"Hang your symptoms! Bring me something to eat!"

Slopay: And, doctor, if you will, I wish you would give me something to help my memory. I forget so easily.

Doctor: Very well. I'll send you a bill every month.

"Yes," said the specialist, as he stood at the bedside of the sick purchasing agent, "I can cure you."

"What will it cost?" asked the sick man, faintly.

"Ninety-five dollars."

"You'll have to shade your price a little," replied the purchasing agent. "I have a better bid from the undertaker."

A member of the faculty in a London medical college was appointed an honorary physician to the king. He proudly wrote a notice, on the blackboard in his classroom:

"Professor Jennings informs his students that he has been appointed honorary physician to His Majesty, King George."

When he returned to the classroom in the afternoon he found written below his notice this line:

"God save the King."

"The trouble with you," the doctor said, after examining the young man, "seems to be that something is the matter with your heart."

"With my heart?"

"Yes. To give it a name, it is angina pectoris."

"You'll have to guess again, doctor," said the young man. "That isn't her name at all."

Not so very long ago a certain attorney was quite ill. A doctor was summoned, but directly he arrived and got one look at his patient he said, "Sorry, but you'll have to call another doctor."

"Am I as sick as all that?" gasped the attorney.

"No, but you're the lawyer that cross-examined me when I was called to give expert testimony in a certain case. Now my conscience won't permit me to kill you, but I'm darned if I care to cure you. Good day."

The lawyer was endeavoring to pump some free advice out of the doctor.

"Which side is it best to lie on, Doc?"

"The side that pays you the retainer."

Professor: "Now, Mr. Jones, assuming you were called to attend a patient who had swallowed a coin, what would be your method of procedure?"

Young medico: "I'd send for a preacher, sir. They'll get money out of anyone."

A doctor who had a custom of cultivating the lawn and walk in front of his home every spring engaged O'Brien to do the job. He went away for three days and when he returned found O'Brien waiting for his money. The doctor was not satisfied with his work and said: "O'Brien, the walk is covered with gravel and dirt, and in my estimation it's a bad job."

O'Brien looked at him in surprise for a moment and replied: "Sure, Doc, there's many a bad job of yours covered with gravel and dirt."

Cholly Lyttlebrayne: Yes, the doctors saved my life, but it cost me over a thousand dollars.

Miss Thotless: Oh! Mr. Lyttlebrayne, what extravagance!

Young Doctor: Why do you always ask your patients what they have for dinner?

Old Doctor: It's a most important question, for according to their menus I make out my bills.

"Dear," said the physician's wife, "when can you let me have ten dollars?"

"Well," replied the medical man, "I hope to cash a draft shortly."

"Cash a draft? What draft?"

"The one I saw old Jenkins sitting in this morning."

Why are a dead duck and a dead doctor alike?

Because they have both stopped quacking.

The physician, after an examination, addressed the wife of the sick man in a tone of grave finality:

"I am afraid your husband is beyond help. I can hold out no hope of his recovery."

This candor was offensive to the patient, who protested with what violence was permitted by a very scanty breath:

"Here, hold on! What are you getting at? I ain't going to snuff out!"

The wife interposed in a soothing voice:

"You leave it to the doctor, dearie—he knows best."

"Your husband will be all right now," said an English doctor to a woman whose husband was dangerously ill.

"What do you mean?" demanded the wife. "You told me he couldn't live a fortnight."

"Well, I'm going to cure him, after all," said the doctor. "Surely you are glad?"

The woman wrinkled her brows.

"Puts me in a bit of a hole," she said. "I've been and sold all his clothes to pay for his funeral."

"So the doctor told you to go to a warmer climate. What was the nature of the trouble you consulted him about?"

"I went there to collect a bill."

"You say this doctor has a large practice?"

"It's so large that when a patient has nothing the matter with him he tells him so."

Young Woman (to her neighbor at dinner): Guess whom I met today, doctor?

Doctor: I'm afraid I'm not a good guesser.

Young Woman: You're too modest. Aren't you at the top of your profession?

"It's a little hard for young doctors to get a start."

"I know. I'm raising whiskers."

"They will help. And I'll loan you some of my magazines for 1876 to put in your anteroom."

The fashionable physician walked in, in his breezy way, and nodded smilingly at his patient.

"Well, here I am, Mrs. Adams," he announced. "What do you think is the matter with you this morning?"

"Doctor, I hardly know," murmured the fashionable patient languidly. "What is new?"

The physician had taken his patient's pulse and temperature, and proceeded to ask the usual questions.

"It—er—seems," said he, regarding the unfortunate with scientific interest, "that the attacks of fever and the chills appear on alternate days. Do you think—is it your opinion—that they have, so to speak, decreased in violence, if I may use that word?"

The patient smiled feebly. "Doc," said he, "on fever days my head's so hot I can't think, and on ague days I shake so I can't hold an opinion."

"How do you pronounce 'pneumonia'?" asked the French boy, who had come to England to learn the language.

His only chum told him.

"That's odd," replied the young Gaul. "It says in this story I am reading that the doctor pronounced it fatal."

What is it that opens to all comers, advertises only the doctors, and yet is good for everything that ails you?

The grave.

Doctor: You are fagged out; you must give up all headwork.

Patient: Why, that spells ruin! I'm a hairdresser!

Mrs. Swellery: What is the matter with my husband, doctor?

Physician: Appendicitis, madam.

Mrs. S.: I am so glad. I was afraid he might have something unfashionable.

A young suburban doctor whose practice was not very great sat in his study reading away a lazy afternoon in early summer. His manservant appeared at the door.

"Doctor, those boys are stealing your green peaches again. Shall I chase them away?"

The doctor looked thoughtful for a moment, then leveled his eyes at the servant.

"No," he said.

"Doctor, I want you to look after my office while I'm on my vacation."

"But I've just graduated, doctor. Have had no experience."

"That's all right, my boy. My practice is strictly fashionable. Tell the men to play golf and ship the lady patients off to Europe."

Wife: My dear, we've simply got to change our family doctor. He's so absent-minded. Why, this afternoon he was examining me with his stethoscope, and while he was listening he called out suddenly, 'Hello! Who is it speaking?'