Hippocrates Quotes

For if a man by magical arts and sacrifices will bring down the moon, and darken the sun, and induce storms, or fine weather, I should not believe that there was anything divine, but human, in these things, provided the power of the divine were overpowered by human knowledge and subjected to it. ~ Hippocrates

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

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. ~ Hippocrates

Primum non nocere, 'First, don't make things worse,' was an essential principle of Hippocrates' medicine. Nowadays, unfortunately, it seems to have been forgotten. Conventional modern medicine aims at getting rid of patients' symptoms. Little, if any consideration is given to the fact that some of these symptoms may actually be used by the body in an attempt to correct deeper disorders. When this is the case, suppressing the symptom does not necessarily help the patient. ~ Samuel Sagan

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. ~ Hippocrates

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

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

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. ~ Hippocrates

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. ~ Hippocrates

Cure sometimes, treat often and comfort always. ~ Hippocrates

Your foods shall be your 'remedies,' and your 'remedies' shall be your foods. ~ Hippocrates

The physician must be able to tell the antecedents, know the present, and foretell the future - must mediate these things, and have two special objects in view with regard to disease, namely, to do good or to do no harm. ~ Hippocrates

Even when all is known, the care of a man is not yet complete, because eating alone will not keep a man well; he must also take exercise. For food and exercise, while possessing opposite qualities, yet work together to produce health. ~ Hippocrates

It felt - nearly twenty-five hundred years after Hippocrates had naively coined the overarching term karkinos - that modern oncology was hardly any more sophisticated in its taxonomy of cancer. ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee

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. ~ Hippocrates

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. ~ Hippocrates

Without metaphor the handling of general concepts such as culture and civilization becomes impossible, and that of disease and disorder is the obvious one for the case in point. Is not crisis itself a concept we owe to Hippocrates? In the social and cultural domain no metaphor is more apt than the pathological one. ~ Johan Huizinga

The wise man should consider that health is the greatest of human blessings. Let food be your medicine. ~ Hippocrates

Divine is the task to relieve pain ~ Hippocrates

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

The human soul develops up to the time of death. ~ Hippocrates

All diseases begin in the gut. ~ Hippocrates

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. ~ Hippocrates

Physicians are many in title but very few in reality. ~ Hippocrates

What remains in diseases after the crisis is apt to produce relapses. ~ Hippocrates

Life is short, the art long. ~ Hippocrates

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. ~ Hippocrates

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. ~ Hippocrates

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

The whole ground of human life seems to some to have been gone over by
their predecessors, both the heights and the valleys, and all things to
have been cared for. According to Evelyn, "the wise Solomon prescribed
ordinances for the very distances of trees; and the Roman praetors have
decided how often you may go into your neighbor's land to gather the
acorns which fall on it without trespass, and what share belongs to that
neighbor." Hippocrates has even left directions how we should cut our
nails; that is, even with the ends of the fingers, neither shorter nor
longer. Undoubtedly the very tedium and ennui which presume to have
exhausted the variety and the joys of life are as old as Adam. But man's
capacities have never been measured; nor are we to judge of what he can
do by any precedents, so little has been tried. Whatever have been thy
failures hitherto, "be not afflicted, my child, for who shall assign to
thee what thou hast left undone? ~ Henry David Thoreau

First do no harm. -Hippocrates
Second, do some good. -Anne M. Lipton, M.D., Ph.D. ~ Anne M. Lipton

Look well to the spine for the cause of disease. ~ Hippocrates

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. ~ Hippocrates

To The Reader Who Employs His Leisure Ill
Whoever you may be, I caution you against rashly defaming the author of this work, or cavilling in jest against him. Nay, do not silently reproach him in consequence of others' censure, nor employ your wit in foolish disapproval or false accusation. For, should Democritus Junior prove to be what he professes, even a kinsman of his elder namesake, or be ever so little of the same kidney, it is all up with you: he will become both accuser and judge of you in his petulant spleen, will dissipate you in jest, pulverize you with witticisms, and sacrifice you, I can promise you, to the God of Mirth.
Again I warn you against cavilling, lest, while you culumniate or disgracefully disparage Decmocritus Junior, who has no animosity against you, you should hear from some judicious friend the very words the people of Abdera heard of old from Hippocrates, when they held their well-deserving and popular fellow-citizen to be a madman: "Truly, it is you, Democritus, that are wise, while the people of Abdera are fools and madmen." You have no more sense than the people of Abdera. Having given you this warning in a few words, O reader who employ your liesure ill, farewell. ~ Robert Burton

FOR HYSTERICAL MAIDENS I WOULD PRESCRIBE MARRIAGE, FOR THEY ARE CURED BY PREGNANCY. - Hippocrates ~ Joyce Carol Oates

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

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

If you are in a bad mood go for a walk.If you are still in a bad mood go for another walk. ~ Hippocrates

Hippocrates can be justifiably regarded as the father of Western medicine, and he stands in relation to this science as Aristotle does to physics. Which is to say, he was almost entirely wrong, but he was at least systematic. ~ Philip Ball

Life is short, and the Art long; the occasion fleeting; experience fallacious, and judgment difficult. The physician must not only be prepared to do what is right himself, but also to make the patient, the attendants, and externals cooperate. ~ Hippocrates

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

Before you heal someone, ask him if he's willing to give up the things that make him sick. ~ Hippocrates

When in a state of hunger, one ought not to undertake labor. ~ Hippocrates

Let food be thy your medicine ~ Hippocrates

If someone wishes for good health, one must first ask oneself if he is ready to do away with the reasons for his illness. Only then is it possible to help him. ~ Hippocrates

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. ~ Hippocrates

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. ~ Hippocrates

The art is long, life is short, opportunity fleeting, experiment dangerous, judgment difficult. ~ Hippocrates

Nature itself is the best physician. ~ Hippocrates

WONDER WITHOUT WILLPOWER
Love's way becomes a pen sometimes writing g-sounds like gold or r-sounds
like tomorrow in different calligraphy
styles sliding by, darkening the paper
Now it's held upside down, now beside
the head, now down and on to something
else, figuring. One sentence saves
an illustrious man from disaster, but
fame does not matter to the split tongue
of a pen. Hippocrates knows how the cure
must go. His pen does not. This one
I am calling pen, or sometimes flag,
has no mind. You, the pen, are most sanely
insane. You cannot be spoken of rationally.
Opposites are drawn into your presence but
not to be resolved. You are not whole
or ever complete. You are the wonder
without willpower going where you want. ~ Rumi

Leave your drugs in the chemist's pot if you can heal the patient with food. ~ Hippocrates

Get knowledge of the spine, for this is the requisite for many diseases ~ Hippocrates

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

Hippocrates, who recommended that all people in a bad mood should go for a walk - and if it did not improve, walk again. ~ John J. Ratey

In acute diseases the physician must conduct his inquiries in the following way. First he must examine the face of the patient, and see whether it is like the faces of healthy people, and especially whether it is like its usual self. Such likeness will be the best sign, and the greatest unlikeness will be the most dangerous sign. The latter will be as follows. Nose sharp, eyes hollow, temples sunken, ears cold and contracted with their lobes turned outwards, the skin about the face hard and tense and parched, the colour of the face as a whole being yellow or black. ~ Hippocrates

Our food should be our medicine and our medicine should be our food. ~ Hippocrates

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. ~ Hippocrates

Flesh is willing, but the Soul requires
Sisyphean patience for its song,
Time, Hippocrates remarked, is short
and Art is long. ~ Charles Baudelaire

Look to the seasons when choosing your cures ~ Hippocrates

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

Extreme remedies are very appropriate for extreme diseases. ~ Hippocrates

III. Hippocrates having cured many sicknesses, fell sick himself and died. ~ Marcus Aurelius

Hippocrates was so great that today's doctors still take the Oath of Hippocrates (though it has been modified during the 20th century) ~ Terry Deary

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 ... ~ Hippocrates

The soul is the same in all living creatures, although the body of each is different. ~ Hippocrates

Suppose you went to your priest and asked for help; he would refer you to the Bible. But if you went the next day to your medical doctor and he referred you to the book of Hippocrates, which was written at about the same time as the Bible, you would think that was old-fashioned. ~ John Templeton

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

Men ought to know that from nothing else but the brain come joys, delights, laughter and sports, and sorrows, griefs, despondency, and lamentations. And by this, in an especial manner, we acquire wisdom and knowledge, and see and hear and know what are foul and what are fair, what are bad and what are good, what are sweet and what are unsavory ... . And by the same organ we become mad and delirious, and fears and terrors assail us ... .All these things we endure from the brain when it is not healthy ... .In these ways I am of the opinion that the brain exercises the greatest power in the man. ~ Hippocrates

Anyone wishing to study medicine must master the art of massage. ~ Hippocrates

Opposites are cures for opposites. ~ Hippocrates

In acute diseases it is not quite safe to prognosticate either death or recovery. ~ Hippocrates

You are a member of the first generation of doctors in the history of medicine to turn their backs on the oath of Hippocrates and kill millions of old useless people, unborn children, born malformed children, for the good of mankind - and to do so without a single murmur from one of you. Not a single letter of protest in the august New England Journal of Medicine. And do you know what you're going to end up doing? You a graduate of Harvard and a reader of the New York Times and a member of the Ford Foundation's Program for the Third World? Do you know what is going to happen to you? ... You're going to end up killing Jews. ~ Walker Percy

All disease starts in the gut. ~ Hippocrates

Into whatever houses I enter, I will go into them for the benefit of the sick. Hippocrates (460?-377? B.C.) I ~ S.L. Viehl

Persons in whom a crisis takes place pass the night preceding the paroxysm uncomfortably, but the succeeding night generally more comfortably. ~ Hippocrates

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

Each of the substances of a man's diet acts upon his body and changes it in some way and upon these changes his whole life depends. ~ Hippocrates

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. ~ Hippocrates

Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food. ~ Hippocrates

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. ~ Hippocrates

Men ought to know that from the brain and from the brain only arise our pleasures, joys, laughter, and jests as well as our sorrows, pains, griefs and tears ... It is the same thing which makes us mad or delirious, inspires us with dread and fear, whether by night or by day, brings us sleeplessness, inopportune mistakes, aimless anxieties, absent-mindedness and acts that are contrary to habit ... ~ Hippocrates

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

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

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. ~ Hippocrates

Hippocrates wrote: Men think epilepsy divine, merely because they do not understand it. But if they called everything divine which they do not understand, why, there would be no end of divine things. ~ Carl Sagan

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

Just as food causes chronic disease, it can be the most powerful cure ~ Hippocrates

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

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

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

The way to health is to have an aromatic bath and a scented massage every day. ~ Hippocrates

Hippocrates cured many illnesses - and then fell ill and
died. The Chaldaeans predicted the deaths of many others; in
due course their own hour arrived. Alexander, Pompey,
Caesar - who utterly destroyed so many cities, cut down so
many thousand foot and horse in battle - they too departedthis life. Heraclitus often told us the world would end in fire.
But it was moisture that carried him off; he died smeared
with cowshit. Democritus was killed by ordinary vermin,
Socrates by the human kind.
And?
You boarded, you set sail, you've made the passage. Time
to disembark. If it's for another life, well, there's nowhere
without gods on that side either. If to nothingness, then you no
longer have to put up with pain and pleasure, or go on
dancing attendance on this battered crate, your body - so
much inferior to that which serves it.
One is mind and spirit, the other earth and garbage. ~ Marcus Aurelius

Walking is man's best medicine. ~ Hippocrates

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, which the student must try to appropriate to himself by reflection, becoming an early pupil in a place well adapted for instruction. He must also bring to the task a love of labor and perseverance, so that the instruction taking root may bring forth proper and abundant fruits. ~ Hippocrates

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. ~ Hippocrates

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

Life is short and the art long. ~ Hippocrates

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

On the last day, when the general examination takes place, there will be no question at all on the text of Aristotle, the aphorisms of Hippocrates, or the paragraphs of Justinian. Charity will be the whole syllabus. ~ Robert Bellarmine

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