Hippocrates Quotations

Make a habit of two things: to help; or at least to do no harm.

A wise man should consider that health is the greatest of human blessings, and learn how by his own thought to derive benefit from his illnesses.

Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food

Healing is a matter of time, but it is sometimes also a matter of opportunity.

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

Keep a watch also on the faults of the patients, which often make them lie about the taking of things prescribed.

Wherever the art of Medicine is loved, there is also a love of Humanity.

There are in fact two things, science and opinion. The former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance.

Whenever a doctor cannot do good, he must be kept from doing harm.

It is more important to know what sort of person has a disease than to know what sort of disease a person has.

It's far more important to know what person the disease has than what disease the person has.

If we could give every individual the right amount of nourishment and exercise, not too little and not too much, we would have found the safest way to health.

The chief virtue that language can have is clearness, and nothing detracts from it so much as the use of unfamiliar words.

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

A physician without a knowledge of Astrology has no right to call himself a physician.

Natural forces within us are the true healers of disease.

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

Extreme remedies are very appropriate for extreme diseases.

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

Life is short, art long, opportunity fleeting, experience treacherous, judgment difficult.

For extreme diseases, extreme methods of cure, as to restriction, are most suitable.

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

For where there is love of man, there is also love of the art.

The human body contains blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile. These are the things that make up its constitution and cause its pain and health. Health is primarily that state in which these constituent substances are in the correct proportion to each other, both in strength and quantity, and are well mixed.

Science begets knowledge; opinion, ignorance.

I will give no deadly medicine to any one if asked, nor suggest any such counsel; and in like manner I will not give to a woman a pessary to produce abortion.

The chief virtue that language can have is clarity.

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

There are, in effect, two things, to know and to believe one knows; to know is science; to believe one knows is ignorance.

Men ought to know that from the brain, and from the brain only, arise our pleasures, joy, laughter and jests, as well as our sorrows, pains, griefs, and tears.

The dignity of a physician requires that he should look healthy, and as plump as nature intended him to be; for the common crowd consider those who are not of this excellent bodily condition to be unable to take care of themselves.

Look to the seasons when choosing your cures

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.

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

For extreme illnesses extreme treatments are most fitting.

Sometimes give your services for nothing.

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.

The art is long, life is short

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

Walking is man's best medicine.

Those things which are sacred, are to be imparted only to sacred persons; and it is not lawful to import them to the profane until they have been initiated in the mysteries of the science.

Life is short and the art long.

First of all a natural talent is required; for when Nature opposes, everything else is in vain; but when Nature leads the way to what is most excellent, instruction in the art takes place...

There are some arts which to those that possess them are painful, but to those that use them are helpful, a common good to laymen, but to those that practise them grievous. Of such arts there is one which the Greeks call medicine. For the medical man sees terrible sights, touches unpleasant things, and the misfortunes of others bring a harvest of sorrows that are peculiarly his; but the sick by means of the art rid themselves of the worst of evils, disease, suffering, pain and death.

And if this were so in all cases, the principle would be established, that sometimes conditions can be treated by things opposite to those from which they arose, and sometimes by things like to those from which they arose.

About medications that are drunk or applied to wounds it is worth learning from everyone; for people do not discover these by reasoning but by chance, and experts not more than laymen.

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

Fat people who want to reduce should take their exercise on an empty stomach and sit down to their food out of breath.... Thin people who want to get fat should do exactly the opposite and never take exercise on an empty stomach.

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

When in sickness, look to the spine first.

Life is short, science is long; opportunity is elusive, experiment is dangerous, judgement is difficult.

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

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

If for the sake of a crowded audience you do wish to hold a lecture, your ambition is no laudable one, and at least avoid all citations from the poets, for to quote them argues feeble industry.

Conclusions which are merely verbal cannot bear fruit, only those do which are based on demonstrated fact. For affirmation and talk are deceptive and treacherous. Wherefore one must hold fast to facts in generalizations also, and occupy oneself with facts persistently, if one is to acquire that ready and infallible habit which we call "the art of medicine.

A sensible man ought to think about that well being is the best of human blessings, and find out how by his personal thought to derive profit from his sicknesses.

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

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

When doing everything according to indications, although things may not turn out agreeably to indication, we should not change to another while the original appearances remain.

What I may see or hear in the course of the treatment or even outside of the treatment in regard to the life of men, which on no account one must spread abroad, I will keep to myself holding such things shameful to be spoken about.

But medicine has long had all its means to hand, and has discovered both a principle and a method, through which the discoveries made during a long period are many and excellent, while full discovery will be made, if the inquirer be competent, conduct his researches with knowledge of the discoveries already made, and make them his starting-point. But anyone who, casting aside and rejecting all these means, attempts to conduct research in any other way or after another fashion, and asserts that he has found out anything, is and has been victim of deception.

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

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

Medicine in its present state is, it seems to me, by now completely discovered, insofar as it teaches in each instance the particular details and the correct measures. For anyone who has an understanding of medicine in this way depends very little upon good luck, but is able to do good with or without luck. For the whole of medicine has been established, and the excellent principles discovered in it clearly have very little need of good luck.

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

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

I swear... to hold my teacher in this art equal to my own parents; to make him partner in my livelihood; when he is in need of money to share mine with him; to consider his family as my own brothers and to teach them this art, if they want to learn it, without fee or indenture.

Timidity betrays want of powers, and audacity a want of skill. There are, indeed, two things, knowledge and opinion, of which the one makes its possessor really to know, the other to be ignorant.

Men think epilepsy divine, merely because they do not understand it. We will one day understand what causes it, and then cease to call it divine. And so it is with everything in the universe.

Time is that wherein there is opportunity, and opportunity is that wherein there is no great time.

The patient must combat the disease along with the physician.

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.

It is changes that are chiefly responsible for diseases, especially the greatest changes, the violent alterations both in the seasons and in other things. (:)...regimen and temperature, and one period of life to another.

The body of man has in itself blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile; these make up the nature of this body, and through these he feels pain or enjoys health. Now he enjoys the most perfect health when these elements are duly proportioned to one another in respect of compounding, power and bulk, and when they are perfectly mingled.

...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.

Male and female have the power to fuse into one solid, both because both are nourished in both and because soul is the same thing in all living creatures, although the body of each is different.

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

There is one common flow, one common breathing, all things are in sympathy.

Whoever is to acquire a competent knowledge of medicine, ought to be possessed of the following advantages: a natural disposition; instructionl a favorable place for the study; early tuition, love of labor; leisure.

I am about to discuss the disease called 'sacred'. It is not, in my opinion, any more divine or more sacred that other diseases, but has a natural cause, and its supposed divine origin is due to men's inexperience, and to their wonder at its peculiar character.

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

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

Correct is to recognize what diseases are and whence they come; which are long and which are short; which are mortal and which are not; which are in the process of changing into others; which are increasing and which are diminishing; which are major and which are minor; to treat the diseases that can be treated, but to recognize the ones that cannot be, and to know why they cannot be; by treating patients with the former, to give them the benefit of treatment as far as it is possible.

To do nothing is sometimes a good remedy.

A physician who is a lover of wisdom is the equal to a god.

It is believed by experienced doctors that the heat which oozes out of the hand, on being applied to the sick, is highly salutary. It has often appeared, while I have been soothing my patients, as if there was a singular property in my hands to pull and draw away from the affected parts aches and diverse impurities, by laying my hand upon the place, and extending my fingers toward it. Thus it is known to some of the learned that health may be implanted in the sick by certain gestures, and by contact, as some diseases may be communicated from one to another.

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

Into whatsoever houses I enter, I will enter to help the sick, and I will abstain from all intentional wrong-doing and harm, especially from abusing the bodies of man or woman, bond or free. And whatsoever I shall see or hear in the course of my profession, as well as outside my profession in my intercourse with men, if it be what should not be published abroad, I will never divulge, holding such things to be holy secrets.

Life is short, the art long.

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

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

War is the only proper school of the surgeon.

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.

A wise man ought to realize that health is his most valuable possession.

Physicians are many in title but very few in reality.

Through seven figures come sensations for a man; there is hearing for sounds, sight for the visible, nostril for smell, tongue for pleasant or unpleasant tastes, mouth for speech, body for touch, passages outwards and inwards for hot or cold breath. Through these come knowledge or lack of it.

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

Look well to the spine for the cause of disease.

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

In all abundance there is lack.