Hickam's dictum is a counterargument to the use of Occam's razor in the medical profession.
[1] While Occam's razor suggests that the simplest explanation is the most likely, implying in medicine that diagnosticians should assume a single cause for multiple symptoms, one form 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.
In 1946, he was a housestaff member in medicine at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta.
Hickam was a faculty member at Duke University in the 1950s, and was later chairman of medicine at Indiana University from 1958 to 1970.