Congenital nephrogenic diabetes insipidus in the Corpus Hippocraticum: The first description.

In congenital nephrogenic diabetes insipidus (cNDI), polyuria and polydipsia are present from birth, as the kidney is unable to concentrate urine despite elevated concentrations of the antidiuretic hormone arginine-vasopressin.1 In ancient Greek medicine, physiology was, needless, to say, an as yet fairly undeveloped specialty among medico-philosophers, based as they were mainly on the Hippocratic medical theory of the four humours (blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile) and the “pneuma” (Greek: πνεύμα, pneuma ≈ air ≈ spirit ≈ the vital force of life).2 Thus, such a complex context as that of cNDI was still terra incognita.