Top 166 Quotes & Sayings by Hippocrates - Page 2

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.

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

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

All diseases begin in the gut.

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.

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

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

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.

I will use treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judgment, but never with a view to injury and wrongdoing. Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course. Similarly, I will not give to a woman a pessary to cause abortion. I will keep pure and holy both my life and my art.

Those diseases which medicines do not cure, iron cures; those which iron cannot cure, fire cures; and those which fire cannot cure, are to be reckoned wholly incurable.

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

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

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

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

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.

The patient must combat the disease along with the physician.

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

Opposites are cures for opposites.

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

Any man who is intelligent must, on considering that health is of the utmost value to human beings, have the personal understanding necessary to help himself in diseases, and be able to understand and to judge what physicians say and what they administer to his body, being versed in each of these matters to a degree reasonable for a layman.

Declare the past, diagnose the present, foretell the future; practice these acts. As to diseases, make a habit of two things--to help, or at least to do no harm.

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.

To really know is science; to merely believe you know is ignorance.

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

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.

Divine is the task to relieve pain

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

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.

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.

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

Sometimes give your services for nothing.

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

Look to the seasons when choosing your cures

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

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

The human soul develops up to the time of death.

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

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.

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.

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

All disease begins in the gut.

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

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

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

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.

When in sickness, look to the spine first.

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

...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.

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

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

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".

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.

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

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.

Look well to the spine for the cause of disease.

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.

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.

Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food

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

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.