“Make a habit of two things: to help, or at least do no harm.”
— Hipócrates Hipócrates
This comes from the Hippocratic text Precepts. Hippocrates argued that a physician must recognize the right moment to act, not just wait for the body to heal itself.
I was born on the island of Kos around 460 BC. My father was a physician and he taught me to observe the sick, not just recite prayers over them. I traveled across Greece, Macedonia, and Thrace treating patients. I separated medicine from superstition. I taught that disease came from natural causes, not angry gods. I founded a school on Kos where students learned by watching real patients. I wrote the treatises that became the foundation of Western medicine. I lived to around ninety, practicing until the end.