I confidently affirm that the greater part of those who are supposed to have died of gout, have died of the medicine rather than the disease - a statement in which I am supported by observation.

Acute [diseases] meaning those of which God is the author, chronic meaning those that originate in ourselves.

Disease is nothing else but an attempt on the part of the body to rid itself of morbific matter.

Physick, says Sydenham, is not to bee learned by going to Universities, but hee is for taking apprentices; and says one had as good send a man to Oxford to learn shoemaking as practising physick.

The arrival of a good clown exercises a more beneficial influence upon the health of a town than twenty asses laden with drugs.

Gout produces calculus in the kidney... the patient has frequently to entertain the painful speculation as to whether gout or stone be the worst disease. Sometimes the stone, on passing, kills the patient, without waiting for the gout.

Fever itself is Nature's instrument.