chapter 3
To help, or to do no harm.
Principles and practices of therapeutics
in the Hippocratic Corpus and in the work
of Diocles of Carystus
1 introduction
In a well-known passage from the HippocraticEpidemics, the doctor’s duties
are succinctly characterised as follows:
[The doctor should] declare what has happened before, understand what is present,
and foretell what will happen in the future. This is what he should practise. As
to diseases, he should strive to achieve two things: to help, or to do no harm.
The (medical) art consists of three components: the disease, the patient, and the
doctor. The doctor is servant of the art. The patient should combat the disease in
co-operation with the doctor.^1
The principle that the doctor is there to help, to refrain from anything that
may be harmful, and to use his skill and knowledge and all the relevant
information about the disease and the patient in order to assist the patient
in his battle against the disease is an idea that frequently recurs in Greek
medicine. It is succinctly summarised here in the words ‘to help, or to do
no harm’ (e B % <
), a formula which is often quoted or
echoed both in the Hippocratic Corpus and in later Greek and Roman
medical literature.^2
This formula is interesting in that it reflects an early awareness of the
possibility that medical treatment can also cause harm. The Hippocratic
Oath, which explicitly mentions the well-being of the patient as the doctor’s
This chapter was first published in slightly different form in I. Garofalo, D. Lami, D. Manetti and
A. Roselli (eds.),Aspetti della terapia nel Corpus Hippocraticum(Florence, 1999 ) 389 – 404.
(^1)
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T 8 #
1
0 3 !# )
#!T
#3 H## #T H
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C
3 1 $
#$.Epidemics 1. 11 ( 2. 634 – 6 L.).
(^2) E.g.On Affections 47 ( 6. 256 L.); 61 ( 6. 270 L.); for a later echo see Scribonius Largus (first centuryce),
Compositiones,pref. 5 : ‘medicine is the science of healing, not of doing harm’ (scientia enim sanandi,
non nocendi est medicina).
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