Dan Quayle & the Potatoe Incident
Some time after Dan Quayle's embarrassing spelling bee incident (in which he incorrectly advised a contestant that 'potato' was spelled with a trailing e), he addressed his critics:
"I should have caught the mistake on that spelling bee card," he admitted. "But as Mark Twain once said, 'You should never trust a man who has only one way to spell a word.'"
Quayle, it was later pointed out, had in fact been quoting President Andrew Jackson...
"I should have remembered that was Andrew Jackson who said that," Quayle declared some time later, "since he got his nickname 'Stonewall' by vetoing bills passed by Congress."
Ironically, Quayle was wrong once again, having confused Andrew Jackson with Confederate General Thomas J. 'Stonewall' Jackson - who had aquired his nickname at the first Battle of Bull Run.
Galen
One day Galen was summoned to attend to the wife of a Roman aristocrat whose own doctor's treatment (for an organic complaint) had proven uneffective.
Galen, while taking her pulse, uttered the name of an actor with whom she was rumored to be romantically linked. Her pulse immediately jumped. He then leaned over and whispered something which made her laugh...
That laugh soon led to her complete recovery and is believed to be the prototypical example of psychiatric treatment for a psychosomatic disorder.
Galen, (130?-200?) Greek anatomist, physician, and writer [noted for his theories and medical writings which formed the basis of European medicine until the Renaissance]