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.

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

There are, in effect, two things, to know and to believe one knows; to know is science; to believe one knows is ignorance.

He who does not understand astrology is not a doctor but a fool.

To do nothing is sometimes a good remedy.

Each of the substances of a man's diet acts upon his body and changes it in some way and upon these changes his whole life depends.

Fat people who want to reduce should take their exercise on an empty stomach and sit down to their food out of breath.... Thin people who want to get fat should do exactly the opposite and never take exercise on an empty stomach.