Doctors don’t know everything really. They understand matter, not spirit. And you and I live in spirit.

There must be quite a few things a hot bath won’t cure, but I don’t know many of them.

The best physician is he who can distinguish the possible from the impossible.

A miracle drug is any drug that will do what the label says it will do.

He is the best physician who is the most ingenious inspirer of hope.

The doctor should be opaque to his patients and, like a mirror, should show them nothing but what is shown to him.

I have yet, I believe, some years in store, for I have a good state of health and a happy mind, and I take care of both by nourishing the first with temperance and the latter with abundance. This, I believe, you will allow to be the true philosophy of life.

Health indeed is a precious thing, to recover and preserve which we undergo any misery, drink bitter potions, freely give our goods—restore a man to his health, his purse lies open to thee.

Medication alone is not to be relied on. In one half the cases medicine is not needed, or is worse than useless. Obedience to spiritual and physical laws—hygiene of the body and hygiene of the spirit—is the surest warrant for health and happiness.

How many desolate creatures on the earth have learnt the simple dues of fellowship and social comfort in a hospital.

The poets did well to conjoin music and medicine, because the office of medicine is but to tune the curious harp of man’s body.

Let me recommend the best medicine in the world: a long journey, at a mild season, through a pleasant country, in easy stages.

When the physician said to him, “You have lived to be an old man,” he said, “That is because I never employed you as my physician.”