16th-century Physician Quotes

Nostradamus
Paracelsus
François Rabelais
William Harvey
Georgius Agricola

On the same terms, therefore, as art is attained to, is all knowledge and science acquired; for as art is a habit with reference to things to be done, so is science a habit in respect to things to be known; as that proceeds from the imitation of types or forms so this proceeds from the knowledge of natural things.

William Harvey
William Harvey
One inch of joy surmounts of grief a span, Because to laugh is proper to the man.

François Rabelais
François Rabelais
Fain would I wed a fair young man that night and day could please me, When my mind or body grieved that had the power to ease me. Maids are full of longing thoughtsthat breed a bloodless sickness, And that, oft I hear men say, is only cured by quickness.

The great virtues that lie hidden in nature would never have been revealed if alchemy had not uncovered them and made them visible. Take a tree, for example; a man sees it in the winter, but he does not know what it is, he does not know what it conceals within itself, until summer comes and discloses the buds, the flowers, the fruit [...] Similarly the virtues in things remain concealed to man, unless the alchemist disclose them, as the summer reveals the nature of the tree.

Paracelsus
Paracelsus
[The] seminary spirit of minerals hath its proper wombs where it resides, and is like a Prince or Emperour, whose prescripts both Elements and matter must obey; and it is never idle, but always in action, producing and maintaining natural substances, untill they have fulfilled their destiny.

To an old leader will be born an idiot heir, weak both in knowledge and in war.

Nostradamus
Nostradamus
The earth does not conceal metals in her depths because she does not wish that men should dig them out, but because provident and sagacious Nature has appointed for each thing its place.

Georgius Agricola
Georgius Agricola
It is unseasonable and unwholesome in all months that have not an r in their name to eat an oyster.

Anatomy is to physiology as geography is to history; it describes the theatre of events.

Go, my sons, buy stout shoes, climb the mountains, search the valleys, the deserts, the seas shores, and the deep recesses of the earth. Mark well the various kinds of minerals, note their properties and their mode of origin. In Frank Dawson Adams