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.

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

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

I reckon being ill as one of the greatest pleasures of life, provided one is not too ill and is not obliged to work until one is better.

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

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.

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

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.

All pain is one malady with many names.

Keep away from physicians. It is all probing and guessing and pretending with them. They leave it to nature to cure in her own time, but they take the credit. As well as very fat fees.

I am dying with the help of too many physicians.

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.