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Hickam's dictum is a medical principle that a patient's symptoms could be caused by several diseases. It is a counterargument to applying Occam's razor in the medical profession. [1] A common version of Hickam's dictum states: "A man can have as many diseases as he damn well pleases." [2] The principle is attributed to an apocryphal physician named Hickam, [2] possibly John Bamber Hickam, MD. [3] When he began saying this is uncertain.
Occam's razor suggests that the simplest explanation is the most likely. Applying this in health care, it purports that diagnosticians should assume a single cause for multiple symptoms. Hickam's dictum admits multiple causes can produce the result confronting the diagnostician.
In 1946, John Bamber Hickam was a housestaff member in medicine at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia. Later, in the 1950s, he was a faculty member at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. He subsequently was chairman of medicine at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana from 1958 to 1970. [4]
an apocryphal physician named Hickam