Hippocrates Quotes

Some patients, though conscious that their condition is perilous, recover their health simply through their contentment with the goodness of the physician.

To do nothing is sometimes a good remedy.

Wine is an appropriate article for mankind, both for the healthy body and for the ailing man.

The patient must combat the disease along with the physician.

He who wishes to be a surgeon should go to war.

I will not give to a woman a pessary to cause abortion.

...all the most acute, most powerful, and most deadly diseases, and those which are most difficult to be understood by the inexperienced, fall upon the brain.

Things that are holy are revealed only to men who are holy.

That which is used - develops. That which is not used wastes away.

Divine is the task to relieve pain

Let your food be your medicine, and your medicine be your food.

Prayer indeed is good, but while calling on the gods a man should himself lend a hand.

From nothing else but the brain come joys, delights, laughter and sports, and sorrows, griefs, despondency, and lamentations

The natural force within each of us is that greatest healer of all.

Declare the past, diagnose the present, foretell the future.

Sleep and watchfulness, both of them, when immoderate, constitute disease.

It is better not to apply any treatment in cases of occult cancer; for if treated (by surgery), the patients die quickly; but if not treated, they hold out for a long time.

Whoever wishes to investigate medicine should proceed thus: In the first place, consider the seasons of the year and what effect each of them produces.

The human soul develops up to the time of death.

Science is the father of knowledge, but opinion breeds ignorance.

Eunuchs do not take the gout, nor become bald.

All excesses are inimical to Nature. It is safer to proceed a little at a time, especially when changing from one regimen to another.

Old people have fewer diseases than the young, but their diseases never leave them.

And if incision of the temple is made on the left, spasm seizes the parts on the right, while if the incision is on the right, spasm seizes the parts on the left.

He who does not understand astrology is not a doctor but a fool.

And he will manage the cure best who has foreseen what is to happen from the present state of matters.

Walking is man's best medicine.

When in sickness, look to the spine first.

The art has three factors, the disease, the patient, the physician. The physician is the servant of the art. The patient must cooperate with the physician in combatting the disease.

Idleness and lack of occupation tend - nay are dragged - towards evil.

Who could have foretold, from the structure of the brain, that wine could derange its functions?

Where there is love of medicine, there is love of humankind.

The forms of diseases are many and the healing of them is manifold.

Wherefore the heart and the diaphragm are particularly sensitive, they have nothing to do, however, with the operations of the understanding, but of all these the brain is the cause.

I will follow that system of regimen which, according to my ability and judgment, I consider for the benefit of my patients, and abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous.

Sometimes give your services for nothing.

An insolent reply from a polite person is a bad sign.

Many admire, few know.

Silence is not only never thirsty, but also never brings pain or sorrow.

Look to the seasons when choosing your cures

Where prayer, amulets and incantations work it is only a manifestation of the patient's belief.

Medicine is of all the Arts the most noble; but, owing to the ignorance of those who practice it, and of those who, inconsiderately, form a judgment of them, it is at present behind all the arts.

It is better to be full of drink than full of food.

Life is short, art long, opportunity fleeting, experiment uncertain, and judgment difficult.

Of several remedies, the physician should choose the least sensational.

I also maintain that clear knowledge of natural science must be acquired, in the first instance, through mastery of medicine alone.

The life so short, the craft so long to learn.

The physician must have at his command a certain ready wit, as dourness is repulsive both to the healthy and the sick.

Extreme remedies are very appropriate for extreme diseases.

What medicines do not heal, the lance will; what the lance does not heal, fire will.