Hippocrates Collected Works I

Hippocrates Collected Works I
By Hippocrates
Edited by: W. H. S. Jones (trans.)

Cambridge Harvard University Press 1868

Digital Hippocrates Collection Table of Contents


PREFACE

GENERAL INTRODUCTION
   1. Greek Medicine and Hippocrates
   2. The Hippocratic Collection
   3. Means of Dating Hippocratic Works
   4. Plato's References to Hippocrates
   5. THE COMMENTATORS AND OTHER ANCIENT AUTHORITIES.
   Galen
   6. LIFE OF HIPPOCRATES.
   7. THE ASCLEPIADAE.
   8. THE DOCTRINE OF HUMOURS.
   9. CHIEF DISEASES MENTIONED IN THE HIPPOCRATIC COLLECTION.
   10. πολύς AND ὀλίγος IN THE PLURAL.
   11. THE IONIC DIALECT OF THE HIPPOCRATIC COLLECTION.
   12. MANUSCRIPTS.

ANCIENT MEDICINE
   INTRODUCTION
   ANCIENT MEDICINE
   APPENDIX

AIRS WATERS PLACES
   INTRODUCTION
   MSS. AND EDITIONS.
   AIRS WATERS PLACES

EPIDEMICS I AND III
   INTRODUCTION
   EPIDEMICS I
   EPIDEMICS III: THE CHARACTERS
   EPIDEMICS III
   SIXTEEN CASES

THE OATH
   Introduction
   OATH

PRECEPTS
   INTRODUCTION
   PRECEPTS

NUTRIMENT
   INTRODUCTION
   NUTRIMENT

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THE OATH

Introduction

OF all the Hippocratic writings the Oath, in spite of its shortness, is perhaps the most interesting to the general reader and also to the modern medical man. Whatever its origin, it is a landmark in the ethics of medicine.

Yet its exact relationship to the history of medicine is unknown, and apparently, in our present state of knowledge, unknowable. The student must, at every stage of the inquiry, confess his ignorance. What is the date of the Oath ? Is it mutilated or interpolated ? Who took the oath, all practitioners or only those belonging to a guild ? What binding force had it beyond its moral sanction ? Above all, was it ever a reality or merely a " counsel of perfection" ? To all these questions the honest inquirer can only say that for certain he knows nothing.

Such being the case it is most important to realize clearly what actually is known. In the first place, the Oath was admitted to be genuinely Hippocratic by Erotian.

As to internal evidence, the Oath, besides binding all who take it to certain moral rules of practice, makes them also promise to act in a certain manner towards co-practitioners.

The taker of the oath--

(1) Will treat the children of his teacher as though they were his brothers ;