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

It is not a case we are treating; it is a living, palpitating, alas, too often suffering fellow creature.

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.”

To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.

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

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

All pain is one malady with many names.

To be sick is to enjoy monarchal prerogatives.

The physician should look upon the patient as a besieged city and try to rescue him with every means that art and science place at his command.

In the name of Hippocrates doctors have invented the most exquisite form of torture ever known to man: survival.

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

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

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.