Let the young know they will never find a more interesting, more instructive book than the patient himself.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

The only places where American medicine can fully live up to its possibilities are the teaching hospitals.

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.

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

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