Hippocrates Quotes - Page 4

When in sickness, look to the spine first.

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.

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

All disease begins in the gut.

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

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

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.

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".

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.

...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.

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

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

The chief virtue that language can have is clarity.

Look well to the spine for the cause of disease.

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.

Sometimes give your services for nothing.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.