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

All pain is one malady with many names.

Let the young know they will never find a more interesting, more instructive book than the patient himself.

To be sick is to enjoy monarchal prerogatives.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

There must be quite a few things a hot bath won’t cure, but I don’t know many of them.