Chapter and verse quotation-citation correspondence site

Correspondence on not-so-famous lost words

 John Endicott asks whether Le Corbusier did in fact declare that “Democracy is a great system, as long as there is a dictator at the top.”

Kit Kennedy hopes someone can place a bleak poem, possibly set during World War I or around 1900,  in which the narrator is writing to the woman he loves toward the close of the year. One line, she recalls, runs something like: “My love only to you this late year date.”

“Every time a physician is called a provider…an angel dies” (March-April). Eliot Kieval suggested a June 1999 column by Ellen Goodman containing a variant of the sentence, and Henry Godfrey unearthed a version quoted by Donald M. Berwick, who attributed it to an unnamed surgeon, in a 1997 article. Neither Goodman nor Berwick knew of a more specific citation when queried (and Berwick no longer quite agrees with the sentiment). The nearest answer, from Dan Rosenberg, comes from a 1982 article, “What Is Wrong with the Language of Medicine?” (New England Journal of Medicine, 306:863f), by the late health economist Rashi Fein, who wrote:  “Several years ago a physician friend told me that he had a James Barrie concept of what was causing the loss of humaneness or humanity in medicine. In his view, whenever a physician or a nurse was called a ‘provider’ and whenever a patient was called a ‘consumer,’ one more angel died.”

Send inquiries and answers to “Chapter and Verse,” Harvard Magazine, 7 Ware Street, Cambridge 02138 or chapterandverse@harvardmag.com.

Related topics

You might also like

Bringing Korean Stories to Life

Composer Julia Riew writes the musicals she needed to see.

Being Undocumented in America

Karla Cornejo Villavicencio’s writing aims to challenge assumptions. 

Matt Levine's Bloomberg Finance Column Makes Money Funny

Matt Levine’s spunky Bloomberg column

Most popular

Shakespeare’s Greatest Rival

Without Christopher Marlowe, there might not have been a Bard.

How MAGA Went Mainstream at Harvard

Trump, TikTok, and the pandemic are reshaping Gen Z politics.

Five Questions with Peter R. Girguis

A Harvard professor of evolutionary biology on what lurks in the deep sea  

Explore More From Current Issue

Man splashing water on his face at outdoor fountain beside woman holding cup near stone building.

Why Heat Waves Make You Miserable

Scientists are studying how much heat and humidity the human body can take.

Renaissance portrait of young man thought to be Christoper Marlowe with light beard, wearing ornate black coat with gold buttons and red patterns.

Shakespeare’s Greatest Rival

Without Christopher Marlowe, there might not have been a Bard.

Nineteenth-century prison ruins with brick guardhouse surrounded by forest.

This Connecticut Mine Was Once a Prison

The underground Old New-Gate Prison quickly became “a school for crime.”