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...