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

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.

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

The doctor occupies a seat in the front row of the stalls of the human drama, and is constantly watching and even intervening in the tragedies, comedies, and tragicomedies which form the raw material of the literary art.

No families take so little medicine as those of doctors, except those of apothecaries.

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.

Be temperate in wine, in eating, girls, and sloth, or the Gout will seize you.

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

Because the newer methods of treatment are good, it does not follow that the old ones were bad: for if our honorable and worshipful ancestors had not recovered from their ailments, you and I would not be here today.

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

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

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.

Well now, there’s a remedy for everything except death.