As to diseases, make a habit of two things — to help, or at least, to do no harm.
In plain words
A doctor's promise is to try to help every patient, and never make things worse.
Where these words come from
- 90% sureThese words were traced back to where they first appeared. That source is listed below.
- From the genuine Hippocratic Corpus, Of the Epidemics, Book I, Ch. 2 — standard English rendering (cf. Francis Adams' 1849 translation used across the corpus on Wikisource/Wikiquote). Distinct from the debunked 'Let food be thy medicine' and 'walking' misattributions.
- Of the Epidemics, Book I
- c. 400 BCE · ancient Greece (Hippocratic school, Cos/Thasos) · guidance for physicians treating patients, part of the Hippocratic Corpus
