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Who really said it

It is more important to know what sort of person has a disease than to know what sort of disease a person has

Not Hippocrates — a turn-of-the-century medical maxim, in print by 1899 Anonymous (medical saying, in print by 1899) Earliest close match spoken by Henry George Plimmer, London, 2 October 1899 · originator unknown
Disputed Rights unconfirmed

This wording appears in none of the surviving Hippocratic writings. Quote Investigator traces the maxim to turn-of-the-century medical periodicals: the earliest close match is an address by the pathologist Henry George Plimmer, delivered 2 October 1899 and printed in St. Mary’s Hospital Gazette. Woods Hutchinson popularized the saying from 1902 while crediting the Guy’s Hospital physician Walter Moxon — a claim QI could not substantiate — and the only Hippocrates ascription in QI’s chronology is a California newspaper health column of 8 January 1987.

Last verified 24 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“It is more important to know what sort of person has a disease than to know what sort of disease a person has” commonly attributed to Hippocrates, but the line is in none of the Hippocratic writings. The earliest close match is H. G. Plimmer's address of 2 October 1899, printed in St. Mary's Hospital Gazette (London); Woods Hutchinson popularized the saying from 1902, crediting Walter Moxon, which has never been verified. Originator unknown. Via Quotle.info.

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Hippocrates. Use the credit shown above instead.

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We couldn’t verify where this wording comes from, so there’s no rights status to give. Safe to present as an unverified or anonymous line — just don’t assert a specific author or source.

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In context

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Provenance

What the record shows

Popularly credited
Hippocrates (c. 460 – c. 370 BC)
Earliest close match
On Some Motives and Methods in Medicine — address by H. G. Plimmer, delivered 2 October 1899
Printed in
St. Mary’s Hospital Gazette (London), October 1899, pp. 116–17
Hippocrates credit
Earliest in QI’s chronology: a health column in the Santa Ynez Valley News (Solvang, California), 8 January 1987

You will have to acquire, too, for any success to be given you, an accurate knowledge of human nature, and you will find that it is quite as important for the doctor to know what kind of patient the disease has for host, as to know what sort of disease the patient has for guest. the earliest close match, 1899

Plimmer’s 1899 wording, as transcribed by Quote Investigator from St. Mary’s Hospital Gazette. The familiar modern shape — “It is more important to know what sort of a patient has the disease than what sort of a disease the patient has” — was already being printed without any author, as an “old saw,” in The Journal of the American Medical Association of 12 August 1905.

Quote Investigator: the full chronology, 1846 to 1987

How we trace it

No rights status can honestly be asserted for this exact wording, because no author or source work has ever been identified for it. The documented forerunners are all safely old — Plimmer’s 1899 address and the anonymous 1905 JAMA version were published long before 1931 and are in the public domain in the United States — and the ancient Hippocratic writings are of course long out of copyright, but this sentence belongs to neither.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

How a Victorian maxim became ancient Greek

The saying is real, useful and old — but late-nineteenth-century rather than ancient, and it has collected several different fathers along the way.

Hippocrates misattributed

No such sentence appears in the Hippocratic writings, and Wikiquote files it under “Disputed”, noting the originator is unknown. The only Hippocrates credit in Quote Investigator’s chronology is a health column in the Santa Ynez Valley News of Solvang, California, dated 8 January 1987 — and even there the wording ran “I would rather know what sort of person has a disease…”

Walter Moxon unverified

Woods Hutchinson attributed the “witty paradox” to Moxon from 1902 onward, and most later citations follow him. But Moxon (1836–1886), a physician at Guy’s Hospital in London, died before the first known attribution, and QI found no substantive support for the claim in his writings.

Caleb Hillier Parry unsupported

James J. Walsh of Fordham credited “old Dr. Parry of Bath” in 1910 and again in his 1912 book Psychotherapy. Parry died in 1822, and QI treats the long delay before this credit appears as significantly reducing its credibility.

William Osler not the coiner

A close variant — “It is much more important to know what sort of a patient has a disease…” — circulates widely under Osler’s name, while this page’s exact wording is the one usually carried under the Hippocrates label. Hutchinson mentioned Osler in The Lancet in January 1903 as one of those who had stressed the point, but credited the phrase to Moxon, not to Osler; Osler’s own 1903 piece in Medical News expressed the idea in quite different words.

The real story: a medical saying already in circulation by 1899, popularized in British and American journals after 1902 and printed as an anonymous “old saw” by 1905 — with no documented link to Hippocrates at all.

Context

Why the line travels

It is the slogan of patient-centred medicine: a one-sentence argument that a fever in one body is not the same illness as a fever in another. Doctors quote it in graduation addresses, textbook prefaces and journal editorials, and the “Hippocrates” label lends a Victorian consulting-room maxim the authority of antiquity.

The record runs the other way. The sentence enters print in English-language medical periodicals at the turn of the twentieth century, in a dozen slightly different shapes — patient or person, kind or sort, “quite as important” or “more important” — the classic signature of a saying passed by ear rather than copied from a text. By August 1905 JAMA could print it with no author at all, calling it simply an “old saw.”

It is quite as important for the doctor to know what kind of patient the disease has for host, as to know what sort of disease the patient has for guest.

Osler, Moxon, Parry — the three names it collects

A close variant of the line circulates widely under William Osler’s name, but Quote Investigator found no coinage by him: Woods Hutchinson named Osler in The Lancet in January 1903 among physicians who had emphasized the idea, while crediting the phrase itself to Moxon, and Osler’s own 1903 article in Medical News made the point in quite different words.

Walter Moxon (1836–1886), the Guy’s Hospital physician Hutchinson pointed to, died before the earliest known attribution to him, and QI has not located the sentence anywhere in his writings. Caleb Hillier Parry, credited by the medical historian James J. Walsh in 1910, died in 1822 — a delay QI says makes the connection unlikely and significantly reduces the credit’s credibility.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Wisdom Knowledge Kindness

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Quote Investigator: the patient/disease maximquoteinvestigator.com

The definitive chronology — an 1846 precursor, Plimmer’s 1899 match, Hutchinson’s Moxon credit, and the 1987 Hippocrates ascription.
Wikiquote: Hippocrates (Disputed)en.wikiquote.org

Files this saying under Disputed, citing QI and stating that the originator remains unknown.
Hippocrates at Wikisourceen.wikisource.org

English texts of the Hippocratic works — Aphorisms, Of the Epidemics, On Ancient Medicine and the rest — searchable for yourself.
Hippocratesen.wikipedia.org

Background on the physician, and on how little is concretely known about what he himself wrote.
Henry George Plimmeren.wikipedia.org

The British pathologist and bacteriologist behind the earliest documented version of the saying.
NLM teaching handout, “Shakespeare and the Four Humors”nlm.nih.gov

A U.S. National Library of Medicine classroom sheet built on this exact wording, carefully labelled “commonly attributed to Hippocrates.”

Credited, but not the source

About Hippocrates

Hippocrates

c. 460 – c. 370 BC · Greek physician of Kos, traditionally the “Father of Medicine”

Hippocrates of Kos was a Greek physician of the classical period, traditionally called the “Father of Medicine” for separating medicine from superstition and grounding it in observation and prognosis. The treatises of the Hippocratic Corpus carry his name, but very little is known concretely about what he himself thought, wrote or did — which is exactly why modern aphorisms about holistic care attach to him so easily. This is one of them: the sentiment is broadly Hippocratic, the sentence is not.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Earliest documented source

Earliest documented close match: H. G. Plimmer, “On Some Motives and Methods in Medicine” (address delivered October 2, 1899), St. Mary’s Hospital Gazette (London), October 1899, 116–17; quoted in Garson O’Toole, “Quote Origin: It Is Quite As Important To Know What Kind of a Patient the Disease Has Got As To Know What Kind of a Disease the Patient Has Got,” Quote Investigator, July 20, 2019.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘It is more important to know what sort of person has a disease than to know what sort of disease a person has’?” Last verified 24 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/it-is-more-important-to-know-what-sort-of-person-has-a/

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