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.

You can’t find the soul with a scalpel.

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

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.

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

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.

A miracle drug is any drug that will do what the label says it will do.

He is the best physician who is the most ingenious inspirer of hope.

Keep away from physicians. It is all probing and guessing and pretending with them. They leave it to nature to cure in her own time, but they take the credit. As well as very fat fees.

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