Hippocrates the iatromechanist.

HIPPOCRATES THE IATROMECHANIST by IAIN

INTRODUCTION THE TITLE of this essay correctly indicates that it is about Hippocrates. Yet the content is largely concerned with the writings of Friedrich Hoffmann (1660-1742), Professor of Medicine and Physics at Halle from 1693 to 1742, and the author of an influential system of medicine. This requires some explanation. It is about Hippocrates, or the Hippocratic writings, in the sense that i...

Hippocrates and the Island of Cos *

As a medical student I once heard Dr. Osler remark that he almost wished he could have lived in the fifth century before Christ so he could have sat at the feet of Hippocrates under the old plane tree on the Island of Cos and have listened to his discourses on medicine. This chance remark excited in me a persistent desire to visit, at some future date, this Island of Cos and sit down, myself, u...

The doctor.

The Hippocratic Oath in Halakhah

Hippocrates, often considered the father of Western medicine, lived in ancient Greece shortly after the building of the Second Temple. Despite his numerous contributions to academic and clinical medicine, Hippocrates is likely best known to modern students of medicine through the Hippocratic Oath, a text attributed to Hippocrates and traditionally administered to students shortly before their g...

The words of medicine: sources, meanings, and delights

ideas of maternal and paternal contributions to the creation of the foetus. We do not learn, however, whether the bestowal of paternity was peculiar to medicine or if other arts and sciences also gained a male parent at this time. As might be expected, in the practical arena physicians or communities of physicians who considered themselves the upholders of empiricism, of sound no-nonsense pract...