Because the newer methods of treatment are good, it does not follow that the old ones were bad: for if our honorable and worshipful ancestors had not recovered from their ailments, you and I would not be here today.

The only places where American medicine can fully live up to its possibilities are the teaching hospitals.

In the name of Hippocrates doctors have invented the most exquisite form of torture ever known to man: survival.

I am dying with the help of too many physicians.

Physician, heal yourself: thus you help your patient too. Let his best help be to see with his own eyes the man who makes himself well.

How many desolate creatures on the earth have learnt the simple dues of fellowship and social comfort in a hospital.

To be sick is to enjoy monarchal prerogatives.

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

Doctors don’t know everything really. They understand matter, not spirit. And you and I live in spirit.

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

All pain is one malady with many names.

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.

The physician should look upon the patient as a besieged city and try to rescue him with every means that art and science place at his command.