We must turn to nature itself, to the observations of the body in health and in disease to learn the truth.
Men ought to know that from the brain, and from the brain only, arise our pleasures, joy, laughter and jests, as well as our sorrows, pains, griefs, and tears.
Men think epilepsy divine, merely because they do not understand it. We will one day understand what causes it, and then cease to call it divine. And so it is with everything in the universe.
Sleep and watchfulness, both of them, when immoderate, constitute disease.
Those diseases which medicines do not cure, iron cures; those which iron cannot cure, fire cures; and those which fire cannot cure, are to be reckoned wholly incurable.
The art is long, life is short.
Those things which are sacred, are to be imparted only to sacred persons; and it is not lawful to import them to the profane until they have been initiated in the mysteries of the science.
Silence is not only never thirsty, but also never brings pain or sorrow.
Before you heal someone, ask him if he’s willing to give up the things that make him sick.
When sleep puts an end to delirium, it is a good symptom.
Persons who have a painful affection in any part of the body, and are in a great measure sensible of the pain, are disordered in intellect.
Persons in whom a crisis takes place pass the night preceding the paroxysm uncomfortably, but the succeeding night generally more comfortably.
In whatever disease sleep is laborious, it is a deadly symptom; but if sleep does good, it is not deadly.
Both sleep and insomnolency, when immoderate, are bad.
When in a state of hunger, one ought not to undertake labor.
What remains in diseases after the crisis is apt to produce relapses.
In acute diseases it is not quite safe to prognosticate either death or recovery.
Life is short, art is long.
But if they called everything divine which they do not understand, why there would be no end of divine things!
Primum non nocere.
Ars longa, vita brevis, occasio praeceps, experimentum periculosum, iudicium difficile.