When the physician said to him, “You have lived to be an old man,” he said, “That is because I never employed you as my physician.”

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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 get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.

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

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.

All pain is one malady with many names.