As to diseases, make a habit of two things — to help, or at least, to…

As to diseases, make a habit of two things — to help, or at least, to do no harm.

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In plain words

A doctor's promise is to try to help every patient, and never make things worse.

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How sure this is: 90% sureThese words were traced back to where they first appeared. That source is listed below.
What turned up: 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.
Work: Of the Epidemics, Book I
Occasion: c. 400 BCE · ancient Greece (Hippocratic school, Cos/Thasos) · guidance for physicians treating patients, part of the Hippocratic Corpus
Sources checked: en.wikiquote.orgChecked using claude-sonnet-5, 21 August 2026Quotes section: Of the Epidemics, Book I Ch.2, distinguished from the page's Misattributed section
en.wikisource.orgChecked using claude-sonnet-5, 21 August 2026primary text; Francis Adams' 1849 translation credited