Did Mark Twain say, “Be careful when reading books about health. You could die from a typo"?

A quote attributed to an American writer warning about the dangers of reading medical books has gone viral on the Internet. We decided to see if Mark Twain said anything similar.

This phrase can meet on numerous websites with selections quotes. Publishing house "Eksmo"included it in the list of Twain's bright aphorisms. Users share it social networks (For example, "VKontakte", "Odnoklassniki" And Facebook*), they also publish it on blogs on different platforms (“Zene", LiveJournal, "Peekaboo"). 

"Verified" could not be found in any of Mark Twain's works. It is not in any digitized archives. Mark Twain Projects Online, collected with the support of the University of California at Berkeley (USA), nor in the database Twain Quotes, which includes texts written by Mark Twain or dedicated to the writer, and which recommends to explore the Mark Twain House Museum in Connecticut. In a large electronic archive Mark Twain, collected by the Library of the University of Virginia (USA), also found nothing similar.

But a similar phrase meets in the German periodical Der Gesellschafter oder Blätter für Geist und Herz with an attribution to a completely different author: “The late Dr. Hertz said to a patient who was accustomed to treat himself with the help of medical reference books: “Be careful, one day you will die from a typo!” An article with this quote was published in 1817. 

A year later, in the German magazine Die Leuchte: Ein Zeitblatt für Wissenschaft, Kunst und Leben note with a similar quote: "He'll die because of a typo!" - Markus Hertz said about the one who treated himself using books.” Both texts refer to Markus Hertz, a German physician and philosopher who lived in the 18th century. Mark Twain he was born only in 1835, that is, 18 years later than the first appearance of such a warning against self-medication in print. 

Hertz was called the author of this phrase later, for example in book Gustav Pollock’s “Hygiene of the Soul: Memoirs of a Physician and Philosopher” (1910): “There is nothing more touchingly funny than to see these unfortunate souls rummaging through medical books to rewrite recipes and health advice. Dr. Hertz once said to one of them: “My dear, you will someday die from a typo.” It is noteworthy that Hertz himself died in 1803, and during his lifetime such statements were not attributed to him, judging by the sources studied by Verified, so his authorship is also in question.

By data The Quote Investigator project, which specializes in checking the correctness of the attribution of quotes, the phrase about death and a typo was first associated with Twain only in 1972. Then the journalist Stan Delaplane in one of his “Postcards” (the name of his travel column) in The Lincoln Star he wrote: “Be careful when reading medical books. You could die from a typo. Who said this? I think Mark Twain." In 1978, in an article for the same publication, Delaplane argued that the author was Twain, more confidently: ““Never read medical books,” said Mark Twain. “You can die because of a typo.” In 1987, the compiler books “The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain” Alex Ayres included this quote in the collection - probably after this Twain began to be credited with the authorship of this statement.

Therefore, there is no reason to believe that Mark Twain has anything to do with this quote. It appeared in print several decades before the writer was born. It is not even known whether he ever uttered this phrase, since it could not be found in any of the written sources left after him. The first time Twain's name was mentioned in connection with this statement occurred 60 years after his death. Most likely, the quote was attributed to the writer by mistake, since he was indeed quite witty and could well have said something similar.

*Russian authorities think Meta Platforms Inc., which owns the social network Instagram, is an extremist organization; its activities in Russia are prohibited.

Cover photo: Mark Twain, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Incorrect quote attribution

What do our verdicts mean?

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