Hippocrates — "Desperate diseases require desperate remedies."
Desperate diseases require desperate remedies.
Get This Quote & Author's Image Illustrated On:
Click any product to generate a realistic preview. Up to 3 at a time.
* Initial load can take up to 90 seconds — revising the preview in another color is nearly instant.
Kitchen
Apparel
Other
More from Hippocrates
"It is health that is the real wealth and not pieces of gold and silver."
"The way to health is to have a good digestion, a good appetite, and a good sleep."
"Foolish the doctor who despises the knowledge acquired by the ancients."
"If we could give every individual the right amount of nourishment and exercise, not too little and not too much, we would have found the safest way to health."
"The art of healing comes from nature, not from the physician."
Details
A pragmatic view on the necessity of strong interventions for severe illnesses.
Date: c. 460-370 BCE
WisdomVerification
Confirmed
Found in 2 providers: gemini,grok
2 sources checked
Understanding this quote
What it means
When a condition is severe and life-threatening, only an equally forceful intervention can address it effectively. Mild or cautious treatments fail against extreme problems — the response must match the scale of the threat. Don't treat a crisis with half-measures. The gravity of a situation justifies and demands a proportionally bold, even risky course of action that a routine case would never warrant.
Relevance to Hippocrates
Hippocrates built medicine on observation and proportional reasoning — match the treatment to the disease, not to custom or comfort. As a practicing physician who catalogued serious conditions like epilepsy, head wounds, and epidemic fevers, he understood that timid remedies killed patients with severe illnesses. This quote embodies his empirical, outcomes-driven philosophy: a physician's duty is effectiveness, even when the cure itself carries considerable risk.
The era
In 5th-century BCE Greece, illness was widely attributed to divine punishment, treated through prayer and ritual at Asclepion temples. The devastating Plague of Athens (430 BCE) killed tens of thousands, exposing the limits of traditional religious healing. Hippocrates championed natural, rational explanations over superstition. His saying validated bold, unconventional treatments when standard methods failed — a striking intellectual challenge to an era that still trusted gods over physicians.
AI-generated insights based on extensive research and information for context. Factual errors? Email [email protected].