Organon : Aphorism 1

The physician’s high and only mission is to restore the sick to  health, to cure, as it is termed.1


1  His mission is not, however, to construct so-called systems,  by interweaving empty speculations and hypotheses concerning the internal  essential nature of the vital processes and the  mode in  which  diseases  originate in  the interior of the organism, (whereon so many physicians have  hitherto ambitiously wasted  their talents and their time); nor is it to attempt to give countless explanations regarding the phenomena in diseases and their proximate cause (which must ever remain  concealed), wrapped in  unintelligible words and an inflated abstract mode of expression,  which should sound very learned in order to astonish the ignorant - whilst sick  humanity sighs in vain for  aid. Of such learned reveries (to which the name  of theoretic medicine is  given, and for which special professorships are instituted) we have had quite enough, and it is now high time  that all who call themselves physicians should at length cease to  deceive suffering mankind with mere talk, and begin now, instead, for once to act, that is, really to help and to cure.