I will use treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judgment, but never with a view to injury and wrongdoing. Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course. Similarly, I will not give to a woman a pessary to cause abortion. I will keep pure and holy both my life and my art.
HippocratesWhere prayer, amulets and incantations work it is only a manifestation of the patient's belief.
HippocratesSome patients, though conscious that their condition is perilous, recover their health simply through their contentment with the goodness of the physician.
HippocratesMen 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 are unsavoryโฆ. And by the same organ we become mad and delirious, and fears and terrors assail usโฆ.All these things we endure from the brain when it is not healthyโฆ.In these ways I am of the opinion that the brain exercises the greatest power in the man.
HippocratesIt 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