Hippocrates of Kos (c.460–c.377 BCE) was an ancient Greek physician who established medical practice based on scientific objectivity and rational examination of the human body. He is considered the founder of medicine in Western culture.
Not much is known about Hippocrates’s life. He worked as some kind of physician on the island of Kos, where he founded a medical school. The 60 works that form the Hippocratic Corpus, the canon of Hippocratic writings, are his students’ summaries of his work.
Many of the philosophical principles that Hippocrates established are still relevant today, including the concept of the body as an organic whole. For Hippocrates, the diagnosis of illness was science, not a religious prognostication, the possession of evil spirits, or disfavor of the gods.
Hippocrates introduced the clichéd platitudes of wellbeing: the significance to fresh air, the right diet, hearty exercise, and adequate sleep. Some of his theories have been rejected as absurd. For example, his theory of the four humors (according to which all illness resulted from the imbalance of yellow bile, black bile, phlegm, and blood) was dismissed before long.
Hippocrates developed the Great Oath of Medical Ethics for physicians to follow. In many countries, physicians pledge a modified version of the Hippocratic Oath as a rite of passage.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Hippocrates
To do nothing is also a good remedy.
—Hippocrates
Topics: Indecision, Decisions
Healing is a matter of time, but it is sometimes also a matter of opportunity.
—Hippocrates
Life is short, the art long, opportunity fleeting, experiment treacherous, judgment difficult.
—Hippocrates
Topics: Doctors
Wherever the art of Medicine is loved, there is also a love of Humanity.
—Hippocrates
Keep a watch also upon the faults of the patients, which also make them lie about the taking of things prescribed.
—Hippocrates
Topics: Health
What medicines do not heal, the lance will; what the lance does not heal, fire will.
—Hippocrates
Topics: Medicine
There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance.
—Hippocrates
Topics: Science
Idleness and lack of occupation tend—nay are dragged—towards evil
—Hippocrates
Topics: Welfare
It is believed by experienced doctors that the heat which oozes out of the hand, on being applied to the sick, is highly salutary. It has often appeared, while I have been soothing my patients, as if there was a singular property in my hands to pull and draw away from the affected parts aches and diverse impurities, by laying my hand upon the place, and extending my fingers toward it. Thus it is known to some of the learned that health may be implanted in the sick by certain gestures, and by contact, as some diseases may be communicated from one to another.
—Hippocrates
Walking is man’s best medicine.
—Hippocrates
Topics: Medicine, Walking
A healthy mind, a healthy body.
—Hippocrates
Topics: Health
A physician without a knowledge of Astrology has no right to call himself a physician.
—Hippocrates
I swear… to hold my teacher in this art equal to my own parents; to make him partner in my livelihood; when he is in need of money to share mine with him; to consider his family as my own brothers and to teach them this art, if they want to learn it, without fee or indenture.
—Hippocrates
Topics: Teaching, Teachers
Sport is a preserver of health.
—Hippocrates
Topics: Sports
Whenever a doctor cannot do good, he must be kept from doing harm.
—Hippocrates
Topics: Doctors
Natural forces within us are the true healers of disease
—Hippocrates
Topics: Disease, Advice
Prayer indeed is good, but while calling on the gods a man should himself lend a hand.
—Hippocrates
Topics: Prayer
A wise man should consider that health is the greatest of human blessings, and learn how by his own thought to derive benefit from his illnesses.
—Hippocrates
Topics: Health
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.
—Hippocrates
Topics: Exercise
Science is the father of knowledge, but opinion breeds ignorance.
—Hippocrates
Topics: Science, Opinion
Our food should be our medicine and our medicine should be our food
—Hippocrates
Old people have fewer diseases than the young, but their diseases never leave them.
—Hippocrates
Topics: Aging
As to diseases, make a habit of two things – to help, or at least, to do no harm.
—Hippocrates
Topics: Help
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