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Oct 1, 2024 · Hippocratic oath, ethical code attributed to the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates, adopted as a guide to conduct by the medical profession throughout the ages and still used in the graduation ceremonies of many medical schools.
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The Hippocratic Oath is an oath of ethics historically taken by physicians. It is one of the most widely known of Greek medical texts. In its original form, it requires a new physician to swear, by a number of healing gods, to uphold specific ethical standards.
Oct 2, 2014 · The most famous of the treatises linked to his name over time is the Hippocratic Oath, which has sometimes been taken by medics as they vow to uphold ethical standards in their profession. And...
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- Life and works
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Hippocrates was a much admired physician from the island of Cos who taught students for fees. Throughout his life Hippocrates appears to have traveled widely in Greece and Asia Minor practicing his art and teaching his pupils, and he presumably taught at the medical school at Cos quite frequently.
Why is Hippocrates famous?
Hippocrates’ reputation, and myths about his life, began to grow in the Hellenistic period, about a century after his death. The Library of Alexandria in Egypt collected medical works from the Classical period, calling them the works of Hippocrates. About 60 of these writings have survived, though most of them were not written by him.
What is Hippocrates remembered for?
Medical practice has advanced significantly since Hippocrates’ day. However, today Hippocrates continues to represent the humane, ethical aspects of the medical profession, mainly through the Hippocratic oath, although he probably did not write it. The Hippocratic writings, which are earnest in their desire to help and lacking in technical jargon, have inspired physicians for millennia.
Hippocrates (born c. 460 bce, island of Cos, Greece—died c. 375 bce, Larissa, Thessaly) ancient Greek physician who lived during Greece’s Classical period and is traditionally regarded as the father of medicine. It is difficult to isolate the facts of Hippocrates’ life from the later tales told about him or to assess his medicine accurately in the face of centuries of reverence for him as the ideal physician. About 60 medical writings have survived that bear his name, most of which were not written by him. He has been revered for his ethical standards in medical practice, mainly for the Hippocratic Oath, which, it is suspected, he did not write.
It is known that while Hippocrates was alive, he was admired as a physician and teacher. His younger contemporary Plato referred to him twice. In the Protagoras Plato called Hippocrates “the Asclepiad of Cos” who taught students for fees, and he implied that Hippocrates was as well known as a physician as Polyclitus and Phidias were as sculptors. It is now widely accepted that an “Asclepiad” was not a temple priest or a member of a physicians’ guild but instead was a physician belonging to a family that had produced well-known physicians for generations. Plato’s second reference occurs in the Phaedrus, in which Hippocrates is referred to as a famous Asclepiad who had a philosophical approach to medicine.
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Ancient Greece
Meno, a pupil of Aristotle, specifically stated in his history of medicine the views of Hippocrates on the causation of diseases, namely, that undigested residues were produced by unsuitable diet and that these residues excreted vapours, which passed into the body generally and produced diseases. Aristotle said that Hippocrates was called “the Great Physician” but that he was small in stature (Politics).
These are the only extant contemporary, or near-contemporary, references to Hippocrates. Five hundred years later, the Greek physician Soranus wrote a life of Hippocrates, but the contents of this and later lives were largely traditional or imaginative. Throughout his life Hippocrates appears to have traveled widely in Greece and Asia Minor practicing his art and teaching his pupils, and he presumably taught at the medical school at Cos quite frequently. His birth and death dates are traditional but may well be approximately accurate. Undoubtedly, Hippocrates was a historical figure, a great physician who exercised a permanent influence on the development of medicine and on the ideals and ethics of the physician.
Hippocrates’ reputation, and myths about his life and his family, began to grow in the Hellenistic period, about a century after his death. During this period, the Museum of Alexandria in Egypt collected for its library literary material from preceding periods in celebration of the past greatness of Greece. So far as it can be inferred, the medical works that remained from the Classical period (among the earliest prose writings in Greek) were assembled as a group and called the works of Hippocrates (Corpus Hippocraticum). Linguists and physicians subsequently wrote commentaries on them, and, as a result, all the virtues of the Classical medical works were eventually attributed to Hippocrates and his personality constructed from them.
Technical medical science developed in the Hellenistic period and after. Surgery, pharmacy, and anatomy advanced; physiology became the subject of serious speculation; and philosophic criticism improved the logic of medical theories. Competing schools in medicine (first Empiricism and later Rationalism) claimed Hippocrates as the origin and inspiration of their doctrines. In the 2nd century ce, the physician Galen of Pergamum developed his magnificent medical system, a synthesis of preceding work and his own additions that became the basis of European and Arabic medicine into the Renaissance. Galen was argumentative and long-winded, often abusive of contemporaries and earlier physicians, but at the same time, with exaggerated reverence that ignored five centuries of progress, he claimed that Hippocrates was the source of all that he himself knew and practiced. For later physicians, Hippocrates stood as the inspirational source, while the more difficult Galen offered the substantial details.
As time went on, reverence for the past had to contend with new notions of scientific method and new discoveries. In the process, Galen’s authority was undone, but Hippocrates’ eminence as father of medicine remained. Scientific progress in fields such as anatomy, chemistry, microbiology, and microscopy, especially beginning in the 16th and 17th centuries, demanded that Galen’s medicine be criticized and revised part by part. Arguments against Galenic medicine were often more effective when they were presented as returns to true Hippocratic medicine. New scientific methodology argued for a return to observation and study of nature, abandoning bookish authority. The simple and direct writings of the Hippocratic Collection read well as sample empirical texts that eschewed dogma. By the late 19th century, Galen was irrelevant to medical practice, and general knowledge of Hippocratic medical writings was beginning to fade. However, today Hippocrates still continues to represent the humane, ethical aspects of the medical profession.
Apr 27, 2023 · Hippocrates was a physician who lived in ancient Greece and is credited with writing a code of ethics called the Hippocratic oath.
The Hippocratic Oath, a seminal document on the ethics of medical practice, was attributed to Hippocrates in antiquity although new information shows it may have been written after his death. This is probably the most famous document of the Hippocratic Corpus.
Aug 9, 2023 · Although Hippocrates probably didn't write the famous oath that bears his name, it serves as foundation for the oath medical school graduates take at the start of their careers.
