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

[p. 293]

could never be enforced ; if they could have been, and if a physician had one or two rich pupils, his financial position would have been enviable. A share in the livelihood of rich men, relief when in need of money, free education for children--these advantages would make it superfluous, not to say unjust, to require any μισθόσ2 in addition.

It may well be that the συγγραφή of ἄνευ μισθοῦ καὶ συγγραφῆσ2 was a private agreement between teacher and taught, quite distinct from the present document, in which case συγγραφὴν τήνδε will refer either to such an agreement appended to the Oath, or more probably to the Oath itself, which might be called a σνγγραφή in the wider and vaguer sense of that term, though it is not precise enough for the legal indenture.

Some scholars regard the Oath as the test required by the Asclepiad Guild. The document, however, does not contain a single word which supports this contention. It binds the student to his master and his master's family, not to a guild or corporation. But if the Hippocratic oath ever was a real force in the history of medicine, it must have had the united support of the most influential physicians. Whether this union was that of something approximating to a guild we cannot say.

The Oath contains a sentence which has long proved a stumbling-block. It is :--οὐ τεμέω δὲ οὐδὲ μὴν λιθιῶντας2, ἐκχωρήσω δὲ ἐργάτῃσιν ἀνδράσι πρήξιος2 τῆς1δε. If these words are the genuine reading, they can only mean that the taker of the oath promises not to operate even for stone, but to leave operations for such as are craftsmen therein. It has seemed an insuperable difficulty that nowhere in the Hippocratic