then provides detailed practical instructions about how most accurately and effectively to
read signs offered by the bodies of the acutely sick. Nor is this the only Hippokratic text
dedicated to medical forecasting. It is joined by Prorrhetic (Prorrh.) 1 and 2, and Coan Prenotions
(Coac.); though none of these achieved the same canonical status as Prog., which was always
counted amongst the writings of H himself in antiquity.
There is some further variation within this prognostic grouping. Both Prorrh. 1 and Coac.
are, in contrast to the more polished and synthetic prose of Prog. and Prorrh. 2, aphoristic
and disconnected (though not disorganized); and their content overlaps considerably. For
example, Prorrh. 1.55 states that, “The loss of speech arising from exertion brings a bad death,”
which follows a similarly terse sentence about a different (but also fatal) form of speechless-
ness, in a longer sequence of bad signs. The same aphorism appears at Coac. 244, with the
preceding entry also identical, though the longer sequence in this treatise is dedicated more
specifically to loss of speech or speech-related symptoms. Coac. contains about 90% of the
170 aphorisms in Prorrh. 1 in some form – more often contracted or otherwise amended
than replicated verbatim – collected and arranged together with almost 500 additional,
and more heterogeneous, segments making a total of about 640 aphorisms in all. Compare
H C, A W.
On the other hand, though both of the other two works open with programmatic
statements about the importance, and basis, of medical prognosis, and share a certain
style and literary vocabulary, they advocate distinct programs and their technical termin-
ology differs. While the author of Prog. promotes the practice of medical prediction as
beneficial to the physician’s authority and reputation and to his success in treating the
sick, with the two combining to produce the “good doctor,” Prorrh. 2 concentrates heavily
on the former. Sound forecasting here brings success in competition with other physicians,
and there is no mention of healing. Prorrh. 2 is, however, more explicit about predictive
methods and their limitations than Prog. The former text defines the careful and method-
ical observation and interpretation of medical signs it advocates and describes, against a
more prophetic or divinatory form of prognosis; while the latter blurs the distinction
between the two.
Thus the opening sentence of Prog. paraphrases H’s description of the famous seer
Kalkhas (Iliad 1.69–70) in explicating what pronoia means in a medical context: i.e., “fore-
knowing and foretelling, in the presence of the sick, the present, the past, and the future.” In
his introductory sequence, however, the author of Prorrh. 2. rejects “prophecy about the past
and present,” stating “I will not divine in this way; rather I will record the signs from which
one must judge which persons will become well and which will die.” The same author also
uses only words of “foretelling” while eschewing entirely the “foreknowing” that accompan-
ies prediction in Prog.
These points make it tempting to think that Prorrh. 2 was written in response to Prog., and
consciously attempts to promote an alternative view of what constitutes “the best medical
prognosis,” an interpretation strengthened by recent suggestions that Prorrh. 2 is early 4th c.,
rather than sharing a late 5th c. date with Prog. More caution is perhaps needed about the
traditional ordering of Prorrh. 1 (usually placed in the mid-5th c.) and Coac. (4th c.).
Although the latter could directly depend on the former (and Prog. and Prorrh. 2 might also
have borrowed vocabulary from the same source), it is increasingly accepted that large parts
of Hippokratic material were held, roughly speaking, in common; and so might be multiply
drawn on, rearranged and modified, without establishing a clear, vertical, line of textual
succession.
HIPPOKRATIC CORPUS, PROGNOSTIC WORKS