Hippocrates

Hippocrates (c. 460 BC - c. 370 BC) of Cos was the first Greek physician, the father of medicine, born at Cos. He was a contemporary of Socrates and Plato and was of wide-spread renown as a physician, and is believed to have authored many medical writings and established medical schools. No fewer than 60 writings are ascribed to him, but only a few are genuine. He was settled in Thessaly and died at Larissa.

Wisdom & Quotes

• Life is short, art long, opportunity fleeting, expenditure treacherous, judgement difficult.

- Aphorisms

• Wherever the art of medicine is loved, there also is love of humanity.

- Aphorisms

• It is far more important to know what sort of person has the disease, rather than what sort of disease the person has.
• Walking is man's best medicine.
• If you are in a bad mood go for a walk.If you are still in a bad mood go for another walk.
• Natural forces within us are the true healers of disease.

- Aphorisms

• The patient must combat the disease along with the physician.

- Aphorisms

• As to diseases, make a habit of two things — to help, or at least, to do no harm.
• Prayer indeed is good, but while calling on the gods, a man should himself lend a hand.

-Regimen

• The human soul develops up to the time of death.

-Aphorisms.

• It is thus with regard to the disease called Sacred: it appears to me to be nowise more divine nor more sacred than other diseases, but has a natural cause from the originates like other affections. Men regard its nature and cause as divine from ignorance and wonder...

- On the Sacred Disease (epilepsy)

• Men ought to know that from nothing else but the brain come joys, delights, laughter and sports, and sorrows, griefs, despondency, and lamentations. And by this, in an especial manner, we acquire wisdom and knowledge, and see and hear, and know what are foul and what are fair, what are bad and what are good, what are sweet, and what unsavory; some we discriminate by habit, and some we perceive by their utility.

- On the Sacred Disease

• There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance.
• If you want to learn about the health of a population, look at the air they breathe, the water they drink, and the places where they live.
• Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.
• Declare the past, diagnose the present, foretell the future.
• 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.
• 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.
• All disease begins in the gut.
• The chief virtue that language can have is clearness, and nothing detracts from it so much as the use of unfamiliar words.
• There is an art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon’s knife.
• Sleep and watchfulness, both of them, when immoderate, constitute disease.

Democritus