disease and its symptomatology. Other elements figuring in the nosological descriptions are:
details of treatment, both dietetic and pharmacological (found in Int., Aff., Morb. II-1, and
Morb. III); prognosis (found in Int., Morb. II-1, and Morb. III); and etiology (found in Aff.,
Morb. I, and Morb. II-2). The etiology in Aff. and Morb. I is centered on the humors: bile and
phlegm.
Numerous parallel redactions of material in these treatises indicate that their compilers
exploited the same source(s), one of which may be the Cnidian Sentences, a lost fifth-century
treatise. The relative chronology of the nosological treatises is disputed, but a date in the
second half of the 5th c. can be advanced for Int., Morb. II and Morb. III, whilst Aff. I and
Morb. I, with their systematic bi-humoral etiology, were more likely composed at the
beginning of the 4th c. BCE.
Ed.: Littré 6 (Diseases I; Affections) and 7 (Internal Affections; Diseases II and III); R. Wittern, Die hip-
pokratische Schrift De Morbis I (1974); P. Potter, CMG 1.2.3 (1980); J. Jouanna, Hippocrates. Maladies II
(CUF 1983); P. Potter, Hippocrates v. 5 (1983) (Diseases I and II; Affections) and v. 6 (1988) (Diseases III;
Internal Affections).
J. Jouanna, Hippocrate: Pour une archéologie de l’école de Cnide (1974).
Laurence M.V. Totelin
Hippokratic Corpus, Oath (350 – 100 BCE)
Short Hippokratic treatise of uncertain origin. The oath falls into two parts. In the first, the
oath-taker vows to Apollo, Askle ̄pios, and the gods of healing to hold his teacher equal to
his own parents, to make him partner in his livelihood, to share with him his own goods, to
impart oral instructions only to his own sons, to the teacher’s sons and to those pupils who
have taken the oath. The second part of the oath contains specific deontological prescrip-
tions; the physician will use medical treatments only to the advantage of the sick, abstaining
from any injury and wrongdoing; it is forbidden to administer poison, to perform abortion,
to operate using the knife, to divulge professional secrets.
Edelstein argued that the oath displays features that are Pythagorean in tone or seem to
echo the precepts of P (cf. D L 8.34–35); other scholars are
less certain. Pythagoreans were unique in prohibiting suicide (P, Phaedo 61d-62b), in
considering embryos animate from the moment of conception (D.L. 8.28–29), and in their
4th c. BCE disputes over blood sacrifice (D.L. 8.13). Furthermore, Pythagorean stipula-
tions of purity may have contributed to prohibitions against using the knife (Edelstein 1943:
32 – 33).
It is uncertain whether the oath was required by some physician’s guild or merely a
normative moral and ethical guide. E Pr. ( p. 9 Nachm.) considered the oath
genuinely Hippokratic.
W.H.S. Jones, The Doctor’s Oath (1924); L. Edelstein, The Hippocratic Oath (1943); G. Harig and
J. Kollesch, “Der hippokratische Eid,” Philologus 122 (1978) 157–176.
Bruno Centrone
Hippokratic Corpus, Prognostic Works (ca 450 – ca 370 BCE)
“I hold that it is an excellent thing for a physician to practice pronoia (forethought/fore-
sight).” So opens the Hippokratic treatise Prognostic (Prog.), in which the author offers a
threefold argument about the benefits of medical prognosis for both doctor and patient, and
HIPPOKRATIC CORPUS, OATH