Doctor and Patient in the Age of Hippocrates

THE medical literature of the ancient Greeks is bulky enough to be put beside the complete extant works of Plato and Aristotle, but its public among classical scholars is now small, while among medical men only those study it who take a special interest in the history of their profession. A hundred years ago this was not so, for then the Hippocratic and similar writings had only just become obsolete as medical handbooks after centuries of use. Some modern doctors who have never looked at them may still find in them much interest and entertainment , and a considerable amount of good sense. To remind these of Hippocratic practice and treatment of patients is the purpose of the present article, which does not pretend to cover more than the Corpus Hippocraticutm, the varied collection of medical books written during the fifth and fourth centuries B.C., and later attributed in bulk to Hippocrates. The medical profession in those centuries was not, any more than other professions , an officially organised body of men having recognised qualifications and subject to a recognised discipline with fixed requirements and penalties. There was indeed a professional spirit among the best practitioners, but this was an ethical attitude without external sanctions. It was part of the teaching of the medical schools and of the guilds, particularly the Asclepiadae of Cos to which Hippocrates himself belonged. The career of a doctor generally began in one of these schools and he would usually belong to one of the guilds, but practice was equally open to others, including quacks, charlatans, drug-sellers, gymnastic trainers, and even magicians. Against these the reputable doctor had to maintain himself by personal qualities and skill in debate no less than by the mere results of medical competence. Training was naturally not an affair of well defined stages such as medical examinations now require. Medical schools with distinctive doctrines, which appear in some of the extant books, existed at Cyrene, at Cnidos, on the islands of Cos and Rhodes, and in Southern Italy and Sicily. But almost nothing is known of their management and routine, and no certificates or diplomas were granted by them enabling a man to practice. Instruction was badly hampered by the religious ban on dissection of the human body, which prevented accurate anatomy of the deeper parts; this was removed only in the third century B.C. at Alexandria, where even vivisection …