Well now, there’s a remedy for everything except death.

No families take so little medicine as those of doctors, except those of apothecaries.

Health indeed is a precious thing, to recover and preserve which we undergo any misery, drink bitter potions, freely give our goods—restore a man to his health, his purse lies open to thee.

Medication alone is not to be relied on. In one half the cases medicine is not needed, or is worse than useless. Obedience to spiritual and physical laws—hygiene of the body and hygiene of the spirit—is the surest warrant for health and happiness.

To be sick is to enjoy monarchal prerogatives.

The doctor occupies a seat in the front row of the stalls of the human drama, and is constantly watching and even intervening in the tragedies, comedies, and tragicomedies which form the raw material of the literary art.

The poets did well to conjoin music and medicine, because the office of medicine is but to tune the curious harp of man’s body.

The best physician is he who can distinguish the possible from the impossible.

The doctor should be opaque to his patients and, like a mirror, should show them nothing but what is shown to him.

I have yet, I believe, some years in store, for I have a good state of health and a happy mind, and I take care of both by nourishing the first with temperance and the latter with abundance. This, I believe, you will allow to be the true philosophy of life.

Let me recommend the best medicine in the world: a long journey, at a mild season, through a pleasant country, in easy stages.

Be temperate in wine, in eating, girls, and sloth, or the Gout will seize you.

It is not a case we are treating; it is a living, palpitating, alas, too often suffering fellow creature.