Doctors think a lot of patients are cured who have simply quit in disgust.

Herold’s quip satirizes the gap between medical self-assurance and patients’ lived experience. The joke hinges on a cynical redefinition of “cured”: not genuine recovery, but the patient’s decision to stop seeking help—out of frustration, expense, or loss of faith in the physician. It points to how outcomes can be misread when the observer controls the narrative: if a patient disappears, the doctor may count it as success rather than attrition. Beyond medicine, the line critiques any profession that mistakes dropout rates for positive results, and it underscores the importance of listening to those who leave systems that claim to serve them.