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• Born: c. 460 BC
• Birthplace: Island of Cos, Greece
• Died: 377 B.C.
• Best Known As: Author of the Hippocratic Oath

Hippocrates is perhaps history's most famous physician. By rejecting superstition in favor of scientific observation, by classifying diseases, and by creating a set of moral and professional standards for physicians, he earned the title of 'Father of Medicine.' He also gave the world the Hippocratic Oath, a code of ethics for physicians which is still taken by graduates at many modern medical schools.

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Greek physician (c. 460 bc–370 bc)

Very little is known of the life of Hippocrates except that he was born on the Greek island of Cos. The main source, Soranus, dates from the second century ad and was clearly telling a traditional tale rather than writing a biography. Hippocrates is reported to have studied under his father Heraclides, also a physician, and with the atomist Democritus, and the sophist Gorgias. He then seems to have spent most of his life traveling around the Greek world curing the great of obscure diseases and ridding grateful cities of plagues and pestilence.

After the fantasy of his life there is the reality of the Corpus Hippocraticum (The Hippocratic Collection). This consists of some 70 works though whether any were actually written by Hippocrates himself will probably always remain a matter of speculation. What is clear, on stylistic and paleographic grounds, is that the corpus was produced by many hands in the second half of the fifth century and the first part of the fourth. Nor do the works represent a single ‘Hippocratic’ point of view but, it has been suggested, probably formed the library of a physician and acquired the name of its first owner or collector.

Of more importance is the character of these remarkable works. They are surprisingly free of any attempt to explain disease in theological, astrological, diabolic, or any other spiritual terms. Diseases in the Corpus are natural events, which arise in a normal manner from the food one has eaten or some such factor as the weather. The cause of the disease is for the Hippocratic basically a malfunction of the veins leading to the brain which, though no doubt false, is the same kind of rational, material, and verifiable claim that could be found in any late 20th-century neurological textbook.

Such rationality was not to rule for many years for in the fourth century bc new cults entered Greece and with them the dream, the charm, and other such superstitions entered medicine. More successful in the length of its survival was the actual theory of disease contained in the Corpus. This was the view, first formulated by Alcmaeon in the fifth century bc, that health consists of an isonomia or equal rule of the bodily elements rather than a monarchia or domination by a single element. By the time of Hippocrates it was accepted that there were just four elements, earth, air, fire, and water with their corresponding qualities, coldness, dryness, heat, and wetness. If present in the human body in the right amounts in the right places health resulted, but if equilibrium was destroyed then so too was health.

A new terminology developed to describe such pathological conditions, a terminology still apparent in most western languages. Thus an excess of earth, the cold/dry element, produced an excess of black bile, or in Greek melancholic, in the body; too much water, the cold/moist element, made one phlegmatic.

One striking contrast between Hippocratic and later medicine is the curious yet impressive reluctance of the former to attempt cures for various disorders: the emphasis is rather on prognosis. For example, the Epidemics describes the course, but not treatment, of various complaints. At least knowing the expected course and outcome of an illness helped the practitioner to inform his patient what to expect, information that could be useful and reassuring. Further, if it is known which conditions lead to a disease such conditions could sometimes be avoided.

The works Regimen in Acute Diseases and Regimen in Health, which deal specifically with therapy, tend to restrict themselves to diet, exercise, bathing, and emetics. Thus the Hippocratic doctor may not have cured many of his patients but he was certainly less likely than his 18th-century counterpart to actually kill them.

Celebrated as the Father of Medicine, Hippocrates (460–377 B.C.E.) was born on the Island of Cos, traveled widely throughout classical Greece in the period of its civilization's greatest achievements, and died in Thessaly. He and his pupils made contributions to medical thinking that have endured for 2.5 millennia. His therapies, based on the humoral theory that imbalance among the four "humors" (phlegm, blood, black bile, and yellow bile) caused most diseases, were flawed, but this does not detract from the excellence of the meticulous descriptions of diseases and their accounts of their natural history that have come down to us in the Hippocratic aphorisms and other writings. Pupils in the Hippocratic medical school were apprentice priest-physicians—for medicine was then a priestly calling.

Hippocrates' work Epidemics must have been based on prolonged and careful observation of the diseases described—all that is missing are numbers and statistical significance tests to make this work suitable for modern courses of epidemiology. Airs, Waters, and Places describes both healthy and unhealthy environments and ways of living, offering timeless advice to physicians who seek to assess these determinants of health and disease:

Whoever would study medicine aright must learn of the following subjects. First he must consider the effects of each of the seasons of the year and the differences between them. Secondly he must study the warm and the cold winds, both those which are common to every country and those peculiar to a particular locality. Lastly the effect of water on the health must not be forgotten. Just as it varies in taste and when weighed, so does its effect on the body vary as well. When, therefore, a physician comes to a district previously unknown to him, he should consider both its situation and its aspect to the winds. The effect of any town upon the health of its population varies according as it faces north or south, east or west…. Similarly, the nature of the watersupply must be considered; is it marshy and soft, hard as it is when it flows from high and rocky ground, or salty with a hardness that is permanent? Then think of the soil, whether it be bare and waterless or thickly covered with vegetation and well-watered; whether it is in a hollow and stifling, or exposed and cold. Lastly, consider the life of the inhabitants themselves; are they heavy drinkers and eaters and consequently unable to stand fatigue, or being fond of work and exercise, eat wisely but drink sparely? (Lloyd 1978, p. 148)

The aspects of Hippocrates' teaching that relate most closely to public health are contained in Air, Waters, and Places, but much of the wisdom that permeates the rest of the Hippocratic corpus is as applicable to public health as it is to the practice of clinical medicine, and is as true today as when it was recorded twenty-five centuries ago. However, the Hippocratic oath, which is one of the basic texts of medical ethics and is still taken by medical school graduates, is no longer believed to have been written by Hippocrates, and it is unknown exactly how many of the seventy-odd Hippocratic treatises he did write.

(SEE ALSO: Ethics of Public Health; History of Public Health)

Bibliography

Lloyd, G. E. R., ed. (1978). Hippocratic Writings. London: Penguin Books.

— JOHN M. LAST

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The ancient Greek physician Hippocrates (ca. 460-ca. 377 B.C.), the father of medicine, put a definitive stamp on the whole character of Greek medicine.

Only the barest outline of the biography of Hippocrates emerges from the ancient writings. He was born on the Aegean island of Cos, just off the Ionian coast near Halicarnassus. He is called Hippocrates Asclepiades, "descendant of (the doctor-god) Asclepios, " but whether this descent was by family or merely by his espousing the medical profession is uncertain. His teachers in medicine are said to have been his father, Heracleides, and Herodicos of Selymbria. Hippocrates certainly was known in Athens, for Plato mentions him twice, on each occasion calling him Asclepiades. It is also clear that the height of his career was during the Peloponnesian War (431-404 B.C.).

The lack of knowledge concerning Hippocrates may seem strange in view of the great volume of writings attributed to him, the Corpus Hippocraticum (Hippocratic Corpus), the first known edition of which is from the time of the emperor Hadrian (reigned A.D. 117-138). It is clear, however, that this body of writings contains material of many different kinds and includes differences in standpoint toward medicine. This disparity was recognized even in ancient times, and Alexandrian scholars differed about the authentic Hippocrates, though none rejected every work.

Any notion of the nature of Hippocrates's medical procedure must be based on pre-Alexandrian texts, that is, on texts dating more closely to Hippocrates's lifetime and reflecting an untainted direct tradition. Two excellent sources are Plato's Phaedrus (270C-D) and Meno's account of Hippocrates in his history of medicine. There is sufficient evidence in these works to establish with certainty the main outlines of Hippocratic medicine.

In antiquity, some works in the Hippocratic Corpus were recognized as having been written by persons other than Hippocrates, but acceptance and rejection depended on a number of subjective stances. More modern scholarship has used as its touchstone the genuine doctrine of Hippocrates as found in Plato and Meno. This mode of investigation, while common to all scholars, has not produced general agreement. It is well to point out that neither Plato nor Meno quotes word for word from Hippocrates's works; they seem in fact to summarize him in their own words, which of course have overtones from their own particular philosophy. So although there is a body of doctrine connected with Hippocrates, modern scholars have no inkling of his prose style, against which the Hippocratic Corpus could be tested.

Nowhere in the Hippocratic Corpus is the entire Hippocratic doctrine to be found. However, these numerous works are so multifarious that here and there parts of the doctrine come to light. It is worth noting that, since Plato and Meno discussed the work of Hippocrates, it is reasonable to assume that they had at their disposal medical books written by him. This makes the problem even more intriguing. Hippocrates's fame, though it was at such a height during his lifetime, still could not ensure the preservation of his works.

Hippocratic Corpus

The body of writing attributed to Hippocrates, the Hippocratic Corpus, is a collection of roughly 70 works that show no uniformity in teaching or in prose style. With a few exceptions the dates of these works range between 450 and 350 B.C.; they are the oldest surviving complete medical books. It would be unfair to allege deception as the motive behind attributing the entire collection to Hippocrates; nor was it the result of ignorance and carelessness, since Galen and those before him did not regard every work as genuine. A reasonable hypothesis holds that these works were gathered together to form the basis of the medical library of some school, probably at Alexandria.

An essential orientation to the Corpus is an appreciation of the audience for which the various works were intended. Some books are directed toward the physician, for example, the surgical treatises, Prognostic, Airs Waters Places, Regimen in Acute Disease, Aphorisms and Epidemics i, in which descriptions of symptoms employ sense data, though they surpass mere descriptions. There are books with complicated pharmacy mixtures, and equally complicated preparation and administration, aimed, no doubt, at the professional physician. Other books, however, are directed more at the layman, for example, Regimen in Health, Regimen ii-iv, and Affections, in which the introduction stresses the importance for the layman of understanding something of medical questions.

One must remember that in antiquity doctors wrote treatises for the educated public, who in turn discussed medical problems with their doctors. The aim of these books is not to advise on self-treatment or even first aid, and so to dispense with the need for a doctor; rather, it is to teach the layman how to judge a physician.

The Hippocratic Corpus also contains polemical works. The Sacred Disease attacks superstition, and On Ancient Medicine opposes the intrusion of speculative philosophy into medicine. The latter work also protests against "narrowing down the causes of death and disease." But there are indeed attempts to apply to medicine the speculative method of early Greek philosophy, as in Regimen i and Nutrition. Occasionally there is no carefully written treatise but a series of jottings - research material in notebook form: Humors and Epidemics i-vii.

Experimentation obviously played its role in the Hippocratic view of medicine, because the individual approach to disease as exemplified in the case histories of Epidemics i, though basic and undeveloped, is nothing more than experimentation. It is obvious, too, that first-hand experience, as opposed to theorizing, played a part, since in scattered references throughout the Corpus the botanical ingredients of remedies are described by taste and odor. There are also instances of very rudimentary laboratory-type experiments. The Sacred Disease describes dissections of animals, the results of which permitted analogies to the human body to be drawn. Further, in their attempts to describe the body, the Hippocratics made use of external observation only. In On Ancient Medicine, the internal organs are described as they can be seen or palpated externally. It is most unlikely that dissection of the human body was practiced in the 5th century.

In Epidemics i the patient's comfort is noted as a matter of concern to the physician, because he was given water when thirsty and cooled when feverish. E. A. Ackerknecht, in A Short History of Medicine, summed up: "For better or worse Hippocrates observed sick people, not diseases." This attitude is a timely antidote to those who formerly insisted on the coldly scientific approach of the Hippocratic physician, who seemed to be so callous toward his patient, particularly in the blunt descriptions of the countenance before death in certain diseases, still known as facies hippo-cratica.

The above illustrations are meant to clarify the most fundamental concerns of the Hippocratic physician. Yet a too enthusiastic and uncritical attitude has been attached to the area of medical ethics also. Ludwig Edelstein commented in his important work on the oath (The Hippocratic Oath, 1943) that the high morality and ethics of this document were not true of the 5th century B.C. but were the result of the infusion of philosophical precepts (mainly Pythagorean) of the end of the 4th century B.C. and later. As a result, the ethic of the medical craftsman was renewed to conform with the various systems of philosophy. This was furthermore not an oath taken by all physicians, if in fact it was sworn by any doctor before the end of antiquity; its fame is more modern than that.

Further Reading

Several Hippocratic treatises are translated in the Loeb Classical Library, Hippocrates (4 vols., 1923-1931). The best treatment of Hippocratic problems is in Oswei Temkin and C. Lilian Temkin, eds., Ancient Medicine: Selected Papers of Ludwig Edelstein (1967). See also William A. Heidel, Hippocratic Medicine: Its Spirit and Method (1941). Background information is in G. E. Lloyd, Early Greek Science: Thales to Aristotle (1971).

For more information on Hippocrates, visit Britannica.com.

Hippocratēs 1. The most famous figure in Greek medicine, born in the island of Cos about 460 BC. He lived to at least 370 and he is said to have died at Larisa (in Thessaly). Scarcely anything is known about his life; yet the attitudes apparent in the writings that go under his name as well as the medical practice they describe are attributed to him personally. The former still express the ethical ideal of a doctor, and the latter too has exerted a very strong influence until comparatively recent times. The collection of medical writings known as the Hippocratic Corpus consists of some sixty treatises, all in the Ionic Greek dialect, most of which were compiled between c.430 and 330 BC. There is no evidence that Hippocrates wrote any of them personally. The collection as a whole seems to have been made in the third century BC. It may represent the contents of the library of the Hippocratic school of medicine associated with the healing shrine of the god Asclepius on Cos. The works cover surgery, epidemiology, pharmacology, embryology, and anatomy, including treatises on prognosis and general health care, in some cases propounding widely differing medical doctrines.

Of two fifth-century works, On Airs, Waters and Places and On the Sacred Disease (epilepsy), the former discusses the effect of climate, water supply, and region on people, and compares the geophysical conditions of life in Europe and Asia; the latter attacks popular superstitions about the disease and demonstrates that, no differently from any other disease, it arises from natural causes. The Epidemics contain the interestingly detailed case-book studies of over forty patients with serious illnesses (of which most of the patients died); books 1 and 3 appear to date from the fifth century. The Aphorisms or collection of medical sayings contain the famous dictum: ‘Life is short, science (technē) long, opportunity fleeting, experiment dangerous, judgement difficult.’ The Hippocratic Oath seems to have originated in a particular group of medical practitioners, but most of the ideals it expresses are common to all. In the Middle Ages ‘Ypocras’ became a favourite subject with European storytellers in tales of magic and intrigue, as was ‘Bokrát’ among Arabic writers, who represented him as studying in a garden near Damascus.

2. Of Chios (c.470–400 BC), Greek mathematician whose writings are lost. He was the first to collect together an Elements of Geometry (the forerunner of Euclid's Elements), which must have contained the propositions known to the Pythagoreans, and presumably contained a certain amount of the geometry of the circle.

(5th c. BC) Greek physician. Hippocrates was a contemporary of Socrates. Little is known of him except that he was short, travelled much, and probably died at Larissa. The Corpus Hippocraticum or body of writing to which his name became attached in fact contains no part that can be reliably attributed to him. His fame as the ideal doctor, and the first to treat the body as a whole organism, rests on Plato (Phaedrus 270 a) and the subsequent escalating attribution of medical wisdom to him. The Hippocratic oath enjoining doctors to heal rather than to harm is possibly of Pythagorean origin.

(hĭpŏk'rətēz) , c.460–c.370 B.C., Greek physician, recognized as the father of medicine. He is believed to have been born on the island of Cos, to have studied under his father, a physician, to have traveled for some time, perhaps studying in Athens, and to have then returned to practice, teach, and write at Cos. The Hippocratic or Coan school that formed around him was of enormous importance in separating medicine from superstition and philosophic speculation, placing it on a strictly scientific plane based on objective observation and critical deductive reasoning.

Although Hippocrates followed the current belief that disease resulted from an imbalance of the four bodily humors, he maintained that the disturbance was influenced by outside forces and that the humors were glandular secretions. He believed that the goal of medicine should be to build the patient's strength through appropriate diet and hygienic measures, resorting to more drastic treatment only when the symptoms showed this to be necessary. This was in contrast to the contemporary Cnidian school, which stressed detailed diagnosis and classification of diseases to the point of ignoring the patient. Hippocrates probably had an inkling of Mendelian and genomic factors in heredity, because he noted not only many of the signs of disease but also that symptoms could appear throughout a family or a community, or even over successive generations.

Of the large collection of writings that derived from the Coan school, only a few are generally ascribed to Hippocrates himself, although his influence is felt throughout. Of these, The Aphorisms, summing up his observations and deductions, and Airs, Waters, and Places, which recognized a link between environment and disease, are considered the most important. The collection has appeared in a number of translations, notably that of Littré.

While the Hippocratic oath cannot be directly credited to him either, it undoubtedly represents his ideals and principles. The oath, which still governs the ethical conduct of physicians today, is often recited at the graduation ceremonies of medical schools. Among other things the oath details codes of patients's right to privacy, asks the physician to pledge to lead an honorable personal and professional life, and requires that he or she prescribe treatments only for curative purposes.

Bibliography

See studies by W. Smith (1979) and W. Heidel (1981).

Hippocrates (460–377 B.C.E.), a disciple of Democritus, was a Greek physician who is now considered the father of Western medicine. Born on the Greek island of Cos, he was associated with the cult of Asclepius, the Greek god of healing whose staff entwined with a serpent became the symbol of medicine. In the seventh century B.C.E, Asclepius, aided by his two daughters, Hygeia and Panacea, superseded Apollo as the greatest of the healing gods, and temples in his name were built to heal the sick. According to legend, the centaur Chiron taught Asclepius pharmaceutical knowledge about drug plants.

Hippocrates, considered the originator of a Greek school of healing, was the first to clearly expound the concept that diseases had natural rather than supernatural causes. Various works attributed to him and to his school are contained in the Hippocratic Collection, which includes The Hippocratic Oath, Aphorisms, and various medical works. He was an expert in diagnosis, predicting the course of disease. Based on the color and pallor of the ill person, disease was considered to be an imbalance of the four "humors"—blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile—a concept that was to affect medicine for the next two thousand years. This concept persists in the following terms that describe distinctive temperaments: sanguine (warm and ardent), phlegmatic (sluggish, apathetic), and bilious (ill humored). Healing emphasis was placed on purges, attempts to purify the body from the illness produced by excesses or imbalance of humors. Hippocrates particularly noted the influence of food and diet on health, recommending moderation.

In the work On Ancient Medicine, Hippocrates notes differences in individual responses to food. He comments on the fact that some can eat cheese to satiety while others do not bear it well, a diagnosis of what we would now call lactose intolerance. The use of drugs was also an area of study: between two hundred and four hundred herbs were mentioned by the school of Hippocrates.

Bibliography

Hippocrates. Hippocratic Collection, in eight volumes. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1923–1988.

Hippocrates. Ancient Medicine. Airs, Waters, Places. Epidemics 1& 3. The Oath. Precepts. Nutriment. Vol. I in the eight-volume Hippocratic Collection. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1923.

Jouanna, Jacques. Hippocrates. Translated by M. B. DeBevoise. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. Original edition: Hippocrate. Paris: Fayard, 1992.

—Jules Janick

(hi-pok-ruh-teez)

An ancient Greek physician (the “father of medicine”) who is credited with founding the study of medicine.

IN BRIEF: n. - Medical practitioner who is regarded as the father of medicine.

Quotes:

"Natural forces within us are the true healers of disease"

"Life is short, the art long, opportunity fleeting, experiment treacherous, judgment difficult."

"Whenever a doctor cannot do good, he must be kept from doing harm."

"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."

"To do nothing is also a good remedy."

"What medicines do not heal, the lance will; what the lance does not heal, fire will."

See more famous quotes by Hippocrates