HIPPOCRATES (460?–380? BCE) was a celebrated Greek physician, called the "father of medicine." In spite of his reputation as the founder of scientific medicine, the embodiment of medical wisdom, and the exemplar of the ideal physician, little is known with certainty about Hippocrates' life. There are only a few contemporary or near-contemporary references to him. He is mentioned by Plato (Protagoras 311b–c, Phaedrus 270c), Aristotle (Politics 1326a14), and Aristotle's pupil Menon (in Anonymous Londinensis 5–6). He is said to have been a native of the island of Kos, off the southwestern coast of Asia Minor, and to have been an Asclepiad (the term may refer to a family or a guild of physicians that traced their origin to Asklepios, the god of healing, or may simply mean "physician"). He was, according to these sources, a teacher of medicine whose fame Plato compared to that of the sculptors Polyclitus and Phidias. He taught that one cannot understand the body without taking into account the whole, and he explained disease as the result of air that forms in the body during the process of digestion.
A biographical tradition that began long after his lifetime incorporated additional details, many of them anecdotal and legendary. Four short biographies are extant. The earliest is attributed to Soranus, a medical writer of the second century CE, while the others were recorded in the Suda, a tenth-century encyclopedia; by the twelfth-century Byzantine poet and scholar Tzetzes; and by an unknown late Latin writer. It is uncertain how much of the information they contain is trustworthy. They relate that Hippocrates learned medicine from his father Heraclides, who was a physician; that he studied under the atomist Democritus and the Sophist Gorgias; that he traveled extensively in Greece, visiting Athens, northern Greece, and the Propontis (the present-day Sea of Marmara); that he taught medical students on Kos; and that he died at an advanced age at Larissa in Thessaly, where he was buried. Additional biographical material contained in a collection of spurious epistles attributed to Hippocrates is almost certainly fictitious.
There has come down to the present, under the name of Hippocrates, a large and heterogeneous collection of medical books, the so-called Hippocratic treatises, which consist of some sixty different works, all written in the Ionic dialect. Most of them date from the late fifth or fourth centuries BCE, but some are much later. The collection may have originated as the library of a medical school (perhaps that of Kos) that was brought to Alexandria in the third century BCE where it came to be attributed to Hippocrates. All the works are anonymous and exhibit differences of style and approach. It is widely held today that none can be attributed with certainty to Hippocrates. It is possible that he wrote some of them, but there is no agreement on which, if any, are authentic. The Hippocratic treatises are the work of many hands and represent a variety of points of view, both lay and professional. They include clinical, theoretical, and ethical writings.
The best known of the Hippocratic writings is the so-called Hippocratic Oath. Exactly when it was written is uncertain. Although the earliest mention of it is in the first century CE, it may date from as early as the fourth century BCE. There is no evidence of its use in the pre-Christian era. Those who took the oath swore by Apollo, Asklepios, and other gods and goddesses of healing to guard their life and art "in purity and holiness." Its religious tenor and some of its injunctions (e.g., prohibition of abortions, euthanasia, and perhaps surgery) suggest that it originated among a restricted group of physicians (perhaps the Pythagoreans, a philosophical sect that emphasized moral purity, asceticism, and piety) who lay outside the mainstream of Greek medicine. The oath was later adopted by Christians, Jews, and Muslims, and (with necessary changes) it gained wide use.
According to popular Greek opinion, disease and death were sent by gods or demons. The Hippocratic writers, influenced by the pre-Socratic philosophers, for the most part rejected this supernatural etiology of disease. Hippocratic medicine was both empirical and rational. It was empirical in being based on meticulous clinical observation (its case histories remained unparalleled until the sixteenth century), and rational in rejecting magic and superstition and viewing disease as the result of natural causes. The Hippocratic treatise On the Sacred Disease exhibits this rational approach to medicine. The writer does not accept the traditional view that epilepsy is caused by divine possession. It is, he believes, no more sacred than any other disease, and has a natural cause. In rejecting a magico-religious etiology for a natural one, Hippocratic writers did not display an antipathy to religion. Instead, they regarded all things (including disease) as both natural and divine. Medicine itself was a divine art, in which the physician sought the assistance of the gods. "Prayer indeed is good, but while calling on the gods a man should himself lend a hand" (Regimen 87). The Hippocratic physicians recognized the healing force of nature (vis medicatrix naturae) and attempted to assist the body to heal itself.
There existed alongside Hippocratic medicine a tradition of religious healing centered in the cults of various gods, demigods, and heroes. The most notable was the cult of Asklepios, who by the fourth century BCE came to be the chief healing god of Greece, eclipsing all others as his cult spread throughout Greece. Sanctuaries of Asklepios were later established throughout the Mediterranean world and attracted the sick, who sought miraculous healing from the god. Hippocratic medicine and temple-healing coexisted apparently without antagonism. Temple-healing by Asklepios was regarded as complementing secular medicine, particularly in chronic cases for which medicine could do little. Both secular and religious healing came from the same god, who assisted physicians as well as the sick. Asklepios was the patron of physicians. Galen called himself a servant of Asklepios, and in Athens physicians offered sacrifices to the god for themselves and their patients.
The deontological treatises of the Hippocratic collection are the earliest writings on medical etiquette. They seek to create a distinct identity for the physician and to lay down guidelines for professional conduct. In establishing a standard of behavior by defining the obligations of the physician, they created both a tradition of medical ethics and an ideal of dedicated and compassionate practice, which were subsequently adopted in late antiquity and the Middle Ages by Christian, Jewish, and Muslim physicians. They have continued to influence the Western medical tradition down to the present day and they remain the greatest legacy of Hippocratic medicine.
Bibliography
The complete critical edition of the works attributed to Hippocrates, with French translation, remains Émile Littré's Les œuvres complètes d'Hippocrate, 10 vols. (1839–1861; reprint, Amsterdam, 1961). There is no English translation of the entire Hippocratic corpus. For a translation of many of the most important treatises with accompanying Greek text, see Hippocrates, vols. 1–4, edited by W. H. S. Jones and E. T. Withington (Cambridge, Mass., 1923–1931); vols. 5, 6, 8, edited by Paul Potter (Cambridge, Mass., 1988–1995); and vol. 7, edited by Wesley B. Smith (Cambridge, Mass., 1994).
On the problem of determining which treatises, if any, were written by Hippocrates, see G. E. R. Lloyd's paper, "The Hippocratic Question," Classical Quarterly, n.s. 25 (1975): 171–192; and Ludwig Edelstein, "The Genuine Works of Hippocrates," in Ancient Medicine: Selected Papers of Ludwig Edelstein, translated and edited by Owsei Temkin and C. Lilian Temkin (Baltimore, 1967), pp. 133–144. The volume contains several important papers by Edelstein on Hippocratic medicine, the Hippocratic Oath, the religious outlook of the Hippocratic treatises, and Hippocratic medical ethics. A good general treatment of Hippocrates and all aspects of Hippocratic medicine can be found in Jacques Jouanna, Hippocrates, translated by M. B. DeBevoise (Baltimore, 1999). On the Hippocratic tradition see W. D. Smith, The Hippocratic Tradition (Ithaca, N.Y., 1979); and Owsei Temkin, Hippocrates in a World of Pagans and Christians (Baltimore, 1991).
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