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(continued)
An essential orientation to the Corpus is an appreciation of the audience for which the
various works were intended. Some books are directed toward the physician, for
example, the surgical treatises, PROGNOSTIC, AIRS WATERS PLACES, REGIMEN IN ACUTE DISEASE,
APHORISMS and EPIDEMICS I, in which descriptions of symptoms employ sense data,
though they surpass mere descriptions. There are books with complicated pharmacy
mixtures, and equally complicated preparation and administration, aimed, no doubt, at
the professional physician. Other books, however, are directed more at the layman, for
example, REGIMEN IN HEALTH, REGIMEN II-IV, and AFFECTIONS, in which the introduction
stresses the importance for the layman of understanding something of medical
questions.
One must remember that in antiquity doctors wrote treatises for the educated public, who
in turn discussed medical problems with their doctors. The aim of these books is not to
advise on self-treatment or even first aid, and so to dispense with the need for a doctor;
rather, it is to teach the layman how to judge a physician.
The Hippocratic Corpus also contains polemical works. The SACRED DISEASE attacks
superstition, and ON ANCIENT MEDICINE opposes the intrusion of speculative philosophy into
medicine. The latter work also protests against "narrowing down the causes of death and
disease." But there are indeed attempts to apply to medicine the speculative method of
early Greek philosophy, as in REGIMEN I and NUTRITION. Occasionally there is no carefully
written treatise but a series of jottings -- research material in notebook form: HUMORS and
EPIDEMICS I-VII.
Experimentation obviously played its role in the Hippocratic view of medicine, because
the individual approach to disease as exemplified in the case histories of EPIDEMICS I,
though basic and undeveloped, is nothing more than experimentation. It is obvious, too,
that first-hand experience, as opposed to theorizing, played a part, since in scattered
references throughout the Corpus the botanical ingredients of remedies are described by
taste and odor. There are also instances of very rudimentary laboratory-type
experiments. The SACRED DISEASE describes dissections of animals, the results of which
permitted analogies to the human body to be drawn. Further, in their attempts to
describe the body, the Hippocratics made use of external observation only. In ON ANCIENT
MEDICINE, the internal organs are described as they can be seen or palpated externally. It
is most unlikely that dissection of the human body was practiced in the 5th century.
In EPIDEMICS I the patient's comfort is noted as a matter of concern to the physician,
because he was given water when thirsty and cooled when feverish. E. A. Ackerknecht, in
A SHORT HISTORY OF MEDICINE, summed up: "For better or worse Hippocrates observed sick
people, not diseases." This attitude is a timely antidote to those who formerly insisted
on the coldly scientific approach of the Hippocratic physician, who seemed to be so
callous toward his patient, particularly in the blunt descriptions of the countenance before
death in certain diseases, still known as facies hippocratica.
The above illustrations are meant to clarify the most fundamental concerns of the
Hippocratic physician. Yet a too enthusiastic and uncritical attitude has been attached to
the area of medical ethics also. Ludwig Edelstein commented in his important work on
the oath (THE HIPPOCRATIC OATH, 1943) that the high morality and ethics of this document
were not true of the 5th century B.C. but were the result of the infusion of philosophical
precepts (mainly Pythagorean) of the end of the 4th century B.C. and later. As a result,
the ethic of the medical craftsman was renewed to conform with the various systems of
philosophy. This was furthermore not an oath taken by all physicians, if in fact it was
sworn by any doctor before the end of antiquity; its fame is more modern than that.
Further Readings
- Several Hippocratic treatises are translated in the Loeb Classical Library, HIPPOCRATES (4 vols., 1923-1931). The best treatment of Hippocratic problems is in Oswei Temkin and C. Lilian Temkin, eds., ANCIENT MEDICINE: SELECTED PAPERS OF LUDWIG EDELSTEIN (1967). See also William A. Heidel, HIPPOCRATIC MEDICINE: ITS SPIRIT AND METHOD (1941). Background information is in G. E. Lloyd, EARLY GREEK SCIENCE: THALES TO ARISTOTLE (1971).
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