HIPPOCRATES

born c. 460 BC, , island of Cos, Greece died c. 377, , Larissa, Thessaly Greek physician of antiquity who is traditionally regarded as the father of medicine. His name has long been associated with the so-called Hippocratic Oath-certainly not written by him-which in modified form is still often required to be taken by medical students on graduating. Additional reading The only modern edition of the whole of the Greek text of the Hippocratic Collection is Emile Littr, Oeuvres compltes d'Hippocrate, 10 vol. (1839-61, reprinted 1961). This work also gives a French translation of the complete collection and is the only complete translation into any modern language. A selection of 28 of the treatises are given in Greek text and English translation by W.H.S. Jones and E.T. Withington in Hippocrates, 4 vol. ("Loeb Classical Library," 1923-31, reprinted 1957-59). An excellent modern translation of 13 treatises may be found in John Chadwick and W.N. Mann The Medical Works of Hippocrates (1950).An excellent discussion of Hippocrates and his influence is in Charles Singer, Greek Biology and Greek Medicine (1922). A shorter discussion, from a slightly different aspect, is in Charles Singer and E.A. Underwood, A Short History of Medicine, 2nd ed. (1962). The whole Hippocratic question is very fully discussed, from the medical and philological aspects, in H.E. Sigerist, A History of Medicine, vol. 2 (1961). For the Hippocratic Oath, see W.H.S. Jones, The Doctor's Oath (1924); and Ludwig Edelstein, "The Hippocratic Oath," Bull. Hist. Med., suppl. no. 1 (1943), reprinted in Edelstein's Ancient Medicine (1967). For a modern discussion of the therapeutic armamentarium of Hippocrates, see J. Stannard, Bull. Hist. Med., 35:497-518 (1961).