Hippocratic Corpus

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Hippocratic Corpus

The Hippocratic Corpus (Latin: Corpus Hippocraticum), Hippocratic Collection, or Hippocratic Canon, is a collection of around seventy early medical works from ancient Greece strongly associated with the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates

Hippocrates

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Hippocrates

Hippocrates of Cos II or Hippokrates of Kos - ancient Greek: ; Hippokr?tes was an Ancient Greece physician of the Age of Pericles, and was considered one of the most outstanding figures in the history of medicine....
and his teachings. They are, however, varied in content, age and style, and are largely of unknown authorship. Of the volumes in the Corpus, none is proven to be of Hippocrates' hand itself, though some sources say otherwise. Instead, the works were probably produced by students and followers of his (Ermerins numbers the authors at nineteen), maybe centuries after he died. Because of the variety of subjects, writing styles and apparent date of construction, scholars believe it could not have been written by one person. But the corpus carries Hippocrates's name as it was attributed to him in antiquity and its teaching generally follow principles of his. It might be the remains of a library of Kos

Kos

Kos or Cos is a Greece island in the south Sporades group of the Dodecanese, next to the Gulf of G?kova. It measures 40 km by 8 km, and is only 4 km from the coast of Bodrum, Turkey and the ancient region of Caria....
, or a collection compiled in the third century B.C. in Alexandria

Alexandria

Alexandria , with a population of 4.1 million, is the second-largest city in Egypt, and is the country's largest seaport, serving about 80% of Egypt's imports and exports....
. It was not, however, only the Koan

Kos

Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek is the historical stage in the development of the Greek language spanning across the Archaic Greece , Classical Greece , and Hellenistic civilization periods of ancient Greece and the classical antiquity....
medicine that contributed to the Corpus; the Knidian

Knidos

Cnidus or Knidos was an ancient Greece city in Anatolia, part of the Dorian Hexapolis. It was situated at the extremity of the long Dat?a peninsula, which forms the southern side of the Sinus Ceramicus or Gulf of G?kova....
did, too.

Content

The Hippocratic Corpus contains textbooks, lectures, research, notes and philosophical essays on various subjects in medicine, in no particular order. These works were written for different audiences, both specialists and laymen, and were sometimes written from opposing view points; significant contradictions can be found between works in the Corpus.

One significant portion of the corpus is made up of case-histories, of which there are forty-two. Of these, 60% (25) ended in the patient's death. Nearly all of the diseases described in the Corpus are endemic diseases: colds, consumption, pneumonia, etc.

Style

The writing style of the Corpus has been remarked upon for centuries, being described by some as, "clear, precise, and simple". It is often praised for its objectivity and concisesness, yet some have criticised it as being "grave and austere". Francis Adams

Francis Adams (translator)

Francis Adams was a Scotland medical doctor and translator of Greek language medical works.Adams had a practice in Banchory, Kincardineshire from 1819?1861....
, a translator of the Corpus, goes further and calls it sometimes “obscure”. Of course, not all of the Corpus is of this “laconic” style, though most of it is. It was Hippocratic practice to write in this style.

The whole corpus is written in Ionic Greek, though the island of Kos was in a region that spoke Doric Greek

Doric Greek

Doric or Dorian was a ancient Greek dialects of ancient Greek Greek language. Its variants were spoken in the southern and eastern Peloponnese, Crete, Rhodes, some islands in the southern Aegean Sea, some cities on the coasts of Asia Minor, Southern Italy, Sicily, Epirus and Macedon....
. This use of Ionic instead of the native Doric dialect is analogous to the practice of Renaissance

Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe....
scientists, using Latin

Latin

Latin is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Military history of the Roman Empire, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe....
instead of the vernacular for their treatises.

Printed editions

The entire Hippocratic Corpus was first printed as a unit in 1525. This edition was in Latin

Latin

Marcus Fabius Calvus

Marcus Fabius Calvus van Ravenna was an author and translator of the works of Hippocrates. He first translated the Hippocratic Corpus into Latin in Rome, 1525....
in Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital city of Italy and Lazio, and is Italy's largest and most populous city, with 2,724,347 residents in an urban area of some ....
. The first complete Greek

Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
edition followed the next year in Venice

Venice

Venice is a city in northern Italy, the capital city of the Italian regions Veneto, a population of 271,251 . Together with Padua, Italy, the city is included in the Padua-Venice Metropolitan Area ....
. An English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa...
translation was first published about 300 years later.

A significant edition was that of Émile Littré

Émile Littré

?mile Maximilien Paul Littr? was a France lexicographer and philosopher, best known for his Dictionnaire de la langue fran?aise, commonly called "The Littr?"....
who spent twenty-two years (1839-1861) working diligently on the Hippocratic Corpus. This was scholarly, yet sometimes inaccurate and awkward. Another edition of note was that of Franz Z. Ermerins, published in Utrecht between 1859 and 1864. Beginning in 1967, an important modern edition by Jacques Jouanna and others began to appear (with Greek text, French translation, and commentary) in the Collection Budé

Collection Budé

The Collection Bud?, or the Collection des Universit?s de France, is a series of books comprising the Ancient Greek literature and Latin literature classics up to the middle of the 6th century....
. Other important bilingual annotated editions (with translation in German or French) continue to appear in the Corpus medicorum graecorum published by the Akademie-Verlag in Berlin.

The Oath

The most famous work in the Hippocratic corpus is the Hippocratic Oath

Hippocratic Oath

The Hippocratic Oath is an oath traditionally taken by physicians pertaining to the ethical practice of medicine. It is widely believed that the oath was written by Hippocrates, the father of western medicine, in the 4th century BC, or by one of his students....
, a landmark declaration of doctoral ethics. The Hippocratic Oath is both philosophical and practical; it not only deals with abstract principles but practical matters such as removing stones and aiding one's teacher financially. It is a complex and probably not the work of one man.

Though it is of unknown origin, like many other works from the time period, it is included in the Corpus and named after Hippocrates for historic tradition. Indeed, this short work has become a very important work in the history of medicine. Traditionally, it has been taken at the beginning of a doctor's career, perhaps to medical school graduates. Because of its antiquity, however, the Oath is rarely taken in its original form today. But, it does serve as a foundation for other, similar oaths and laws that define good medical practice and morals; derivatives of which are still taken.

List of works of the Corpus

The Prognostics
On Airs, Waters, and Places
On Regimen in Acute Diseases.
The Aphorisms
The Epidemics
On the Articulations
On Fractures
On the Instruments of Reduction
The Hippocratic Oath
Hippocratic Oath

The Hippocratic Oath is an oath traditionally taken by physicians pertaining to the ethical practice of medicine. It is widely believed that the oath was written by Hippocrates, the father of western medicine, in the 4th century BC, or by one of his students....
On Ancient Medicine
On Fractures
The Instruments of Reduction
The Physician's Establishment or Surgery
On Injuries of the Head
The Law
On the Nature of Man
Regimen of Presons in Health
The Coan Praenotions
Prorrhetics

Of Ulcers
Of Fistulae
Of Hemorrhoids
Of the Pneuma
Of the Sacred Disease
Of the Places in Man
Of Art
Of Regimen, and of Dreams
Of Affections
Of Internal Affections
Of Diseases
Of the Seventh Month Foetus
Of the Eighth Month Foetus
On the Surgery
On Generation
On the Nature of the Infant
On the Diseases of Women
On the Diseases of Young Women
On Unfruitful Women
On Superfoetation

On the Heart
On Ailment
On Fleshes
On the Weeks
On the Glands
On the Nature of Bones
On the Physician
On Honorable Conduct
Precepts
On Anatomy
On the Sight
On Dentition
On the Nature of the Woman
On the Excision of the Foetus
On Crisis
On Critical Days
On Purgative Medicines
On dangerous Wounds (lost)
On Missiles and Wounds(lost)

Bibliography

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External links

offers Littré's edition of Hippocrates (Greek text and French translation), complete in scanned page images (, , , , , , , , , )

Hippocratic Corpus

Content

Style

Printed editions

The Oath

List of works of the Corpus

See also

Bibliography

External links