Quotes from Hippocrates

If we could give every individual the right amount of nourishment and exercise, not too little and not too much, we would have found the safest way to health.

The physician must be able to tell the antecedents, know the present, and foretell the future — must mediate these things, and have two special objects in view with regard to disease, namely, to do good or to do no harm.

All parts of the body which have a function, if used in moderation and exercised in labors in which each is accustomed, become thereby healthy, well developed and age more slowly, but if unused they become liable to disease, defective in growth and age quickly.

All disease begins in the gut.

Cure sometimes, treat often and comfort always.

When sleep puts an end to delirium, it is a good symptom.

Disease [is] not an entity, but a fluctuating condition of the patient's body, a battle between the substance of disease and the natural self-healing tendency of the body.

For if a man by magical arts and sacrifices will bring down the moon, and darken the sun, and induce storms, or fine weather, I should not believe that there was anything divine, but human, in these things, provided the power of the divine were overpowered by human knowledge and subjected to it.

Both sleep and insomnolency, when immoderate, are bad.

Vita brevis, ars longa, occasio praeceps, experimentum periculosum, iudicium difficile.

Persons who have a painful affection in any part of the body, and are in a great measure sensible of the pain, are disordered in intellect.

The chief virtue that language can have is clearness, and nothing detracts from it so much as the use of unfamiliar words.

In whatever disease sleep is laborious, it is a deadly symptom; but if sleep does good, it is not deadly.

Persons in whom a crisis takes place pass the night preceding the paroxysm uncomfortably, but the succeeding night generally more comfortably.

What remains in diseases after the crisis is apt to produce relapses.

What medicines do not heal, the lance will; what the lance does not heal, fire will.

When in a state of hunger, one ought not to undertake labor.

All the most acute, most powerful, and most deadly diseases, and those which are most difficult to be understood by the inexperienced, fall upon the brain.

In acute diseases it is not quite safe to prognosticate either death or recovery.

first, the countenance of the patient, if it be like those of persons in health, and more so, if like itself, for this is the best of all; whereas the most opposite to it is the worst, such as the following; a sharp nose, hollow eyes, collapsed temples; the ears cold, contracted, and their lobes turned out: the skin about the forehead being rough, distended, and parched; the color of the whole face being green, black, livid, or lead-colored.

But if they called everything divine which they do not understand, why there would be no end of divine things!

The selflessness and dedication shown by many Greek doctors can be seen not only in such works as the Epidemics, but also in, for example, Thucydides' account of the plague at Athens (II, 47ff.) – where he notes the high incidence of mortality from the disease among the doctors who attempted to treat it.

And in this way truly you may see that it is not a god that injures the body, but disease.

It is far more important to know what sort of person has the disease, rather than what sort of disease the person has.