The Cambridge Companion to Hippocrates

Abstract

Hippocrates remains a figure shrouded in mystery. We have next to no indubitable facts about his life. Although a large number of texts attributed to Hippocrates have come down to us, we cannot be certain that any one of them was written by the historical Hippocrates. One of the most eminent historians of medicine, Philip J. van der Eijk, has recently argued that we should abandon the moniker 'Hippocratic'and simply talk about early Greek medicine, as the so-called Hippocratic Corpus is so diverse and contains writings from the fifth century BC to the first and second century AD. Not everybody, of course, would agree with this view, yet it shows that Hippocrates remains a hot topic of debate, which attracts an ever growing amount of scholarship.Hippocratic studies have grown enormously since the late nineteenth century. In the early twentieth century, there was a clear focus on editing texts according to the latest philological methods. The great editorial project Corpus Medicorum Graecorum began in 1904 with the publication of a manuscript catalogue by Hermann Diels .One of the questions that scholars hotly debated since antiquity is the so-called Hippocratic Question: what texts in the Hippocratic Corpus were written by the historical Hippocrates? Already in the nineteenth century there emerged a view that one can divide the treatises of the Hippocratic Corpus into Coan and Cnidian, the former more rational or characterised by prognostic, the latter more empiric and diagnostic.In the second half of the twentieth century, a number of scholars tried to discern certain Coan and Cnidian layers within individual treatises, notably by paying close attention to language and style.The great French editor of Hippocrates, Émile Littré (1801-81), placed the treatise On Ancient Medicine at the beginning of his 1

From Ancient Texts to Digital Imagery: A Brief History on the Evolution of Anatomic Illustrations

“…The study of anatomy in the ancient world dates to the 5th century BC with an emphasis on the external body rather than a thorough knowledge of the human structure. 1 By looking to the Homeric epic poems and the works ascribed to Hippocrates, Corpus Hippocraticum , we get a glimpse of the classical surgeon, whose abilities were limited to wound care and ailments of the external body, such as foreign body extraction, arresting of hemorrhage, and manual manipulations of orthopedic injuries (Figure 1). 1,2 One notable exception is the use of trephination, which was the mainstay treatment for head injuries, even in minor cases.…”

“…1 By looking to the Homeric epic poems and the works ascribed to Hippocrates, Corpus Hippocraticum , we get a glimpse of the classical surgeon, whose abilities were limited to wound care and ailments of the external body, such as foreign body extraction, arresting of hemorrhage, and manual manipulations of orthopedic injuries (Figure 1). 1,2 One notable exception is the use of trephination, which was the mainstay treatment for head injuries, even in minor cases. 1 This lack of a deeper understanding of visceral anatomy and pathophysiology can be attributed to the contemporary religious and social objections to human cadaveric dissections.…”

“…1,2 One notable exception is the use of trephination, which was the mainstay treatment for head injuries, even in minor cases. 1 This lack of a deeper understanding of visceral anatomy and pathophysiology can be attributed to the contemporary religious and social objections to human cadaveric dissections. Available literature suggests anatomic descriptions were based on animal dissections with largely descriptive texts that contained scarce anatomic illustrations at best.…”