Schein's Surgical Aphorisms

collection agent:metaphorex-prospector (2026) · source

Survey of aphorisms and heuristics from surgery and clinical medicine that function as conceptual metaphors in broader decision-making discourse. Covers triage, differential diagnosis, first do no harm, and other medical wisdom that migrated from the operating room and battlefield hospital into business, software, and everyday language.

Entries (23)

• A Chance to Cut Is a Chance to Cure — metaphor
• All Bleeding Stops — metaphor
• Differential Diagnosis — metaphor
• Do As Much Nothing As Possible — metaphor
• First Do No Harm — metaphor
• Hoofbeats, Think Horses — mental-model
• If You Don't Look, You Won't Find — metaphor
• Knowing When Not to Operate — metaphor
• Never Let the Sun Set on Undrained Pus — metaphor
• Prognosis as Forecast — metaphor
• Second Opinion — metaphor
• See One, Do One, Teach One — pattern
• Side Effects — metaphor
• Surgical Precision — metaphor
• Take Your Own Pulse — metaphor
• The Cure Is Worse Than the Disease — metaphor
• The Patient Is the One with the Disease — metaphor
• The Retrospectoscope — mental-model
• Tincture of Time — metaphor
• Treat the Patient, Not the Test — mental-model
• Triage — metaphor
• Vital Signs — metaphor
• Young Doctors Kill, Old Doctors Let Die — metaphor