Hippocrates and the Art of Medicine
Exploring the Legacy of the "Father of Medicine" Through His Writings and Oath
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Whoever treats of this art [medicine] should treat of things which are familiar to the common people. For of nothing else will such a one have to inquire or treat, but of the diseases under which common people have labored.
Hippocrates, “On Ancient Medicine” (400 BC)
One is constantly told that it is morbid to think about illness. But to me it seems perfectly healthy to think about disease and morbid to think about health. A man is only wasting his time when he thinks about the absence of disease when it is absent.
G.K. Chesterton, New York Times (1921)
Hippocrates, the noble physician of ancient Greece, is widely regarded as the "Father of Medicine" because he was among the first to leave behind a systematic body of literature on the subject. My Online Great Books reading club convened last week for our monthly seminar to discuss several of his key works:
One of our members, Andrew, is currently in his final year of medical school in Canada, and it was on his account that we began our reading year with Hippocrates. Though some of the texts contained lengthy and, at times, horrifying descriptions of diseases and bodily evacuations, they also provided ample material for one of our better discussions. Health, like happiness, is something universally desired—though its pursuit proves often to be elusive.
Hippocrates: The Physician and His Philosophy
Born around 460 BC on the island of Cos in the Aegean Sea, Hippocrates studied in Athens and practiced medicine throughout Greece. His expertise was so highly regarded that he was reportedly consulted by the kings of Macedon and Persia. Even Plato and Aristotle acknowledged his greatness, with Socrates mentioning him in the Symposium.1
Hippocrates was a member of the Asclepiad guild of physicians but opposed the use of magical rites in treating patients. Instead, he sought natural explanations for disease, an approach that is especially evident in On the Sacred Disease, where he challenged the prevailing belief that epilepsy was a divine affliction. His holistic approach to medicine relied on extensive observations of the patient and locale, and emphasized the body's natural ability to heal itself with treatments promoting diet, moderate exercise, rest, and bathing—practices which we still believe provide a strong foundation for health.
Like most physicians of his era, Hippocrates adhered to the theory of the four humors—blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm—as governing both physical health and a person’s temperament. According to this view, disease resulted from an imbalance of those elements, while health signified their proper proportion. This theory sounds quaint to us today, but we’ve got to ask whether, given the data available to him then, Hippocrates’ inferences about health and disease weren’t reasonable?
The Greek knew that there were certain collections of morbid phenomena which he called diseases; that these diseases normally ran a certain course; that their origin was not unconnected with the geographical and atmospheric environment; that the patient, in order to recover his health, must modify his ordinary mode of living. Beyond this he knew, and could know, nothing, and was compelled to fill up the blanks in his knowledge by having recourse to conjecture and hypothesis. In doing so he was obeying a human instinct which assures us that progress requires the use of stop-gaps where complete and accurate knowledge is unattainable, and that a working hypothesis, although wrong, is better than no hypothesis at all.2
Medicine as an Art, Science, and Profession
The Syntopicon: An Index to the Great Ideas (my trusty guide to the Great Books) describes medicine as an art, a science, and a profession. Historically, medicine was one of the three great fields of study at medieval universities, alongside law and theology. These disciplines demarcated man's relationships within different realms of knowledge:
Medicine: Man’s relation to nature
Law: Man’s relation to other men
Theology: Man’s relation to God
Though the emergence of these universities was still more than a millennium away when Hippocrates practiced, his approach to medicine as the pursuit of humoral balance and disease management would, along with the works of Galen (129-216 AD), influence and align with later medieval thought on holistic philosophies of wellness and man’s interconnectedness to the cosmos.
Medicine is sometimes called the oldest profession (though some may argue there are older occupations). Its claim to this distinction derives from the understanding of profession as a group of practitioners who dedicate themselves to serving others with their art, share a common training, and profess an explicit code of practice. The earliest example of such a professional code is the Hippocratic Oath.
The Hippocratic Oath: A Timeless Code of Ethics?
The Hippocratic Oath remains one of the most influential writings in medical history. Surprisingly, it is neither required by most medical schools today nor does it contain the famous phrase "First, do no harm." That statement originates from another passage in Epidemics, where Hippocrates advises:
The physician must be able to tell the antecedents, know the present, and foretell the future…and have two special objects in view with regard to diseases: namely, to do good or to do no harm.3
Our discussion on the Oath proved to be the most vigorous part of the evening, not because of its prohibitions on euthanasia and abortion (though those remain contentious cultural issues), but because of a broader question: What is the value of oath-taking itself?
One of our members posed an interesting challenge:
"If I believe in Jesus' exhortation to ‘let your yes be yes, and your no be no,’4 why do I need an oath to compel me to do what is right? Furthermore, why should I bind myself to a lifelong promise when circumstances may change in the future, potentially leading me to regret my pledge?"
He cited the example of an ectopic pregnancy, where the removal of a fallopian tube to save the mother results in the unavoidable loss of the fetus—an outcome that could be interpreted as violating the Hippocratic Oath’s prohibition against abortive remedies. While this example has already been adequately addressed in bioethical literature, I believe his point deserves our consideration: a blanket oath may carry considerable ethical risk for the person who is bound by it.
The Role of Oaths in Professional Life
Most of us in the group leaned toward viewing professional oaths as ennobling and necessary. Several of our members, including a judge and three active or retired military officers, have sworn similar oaths in their own professions, voluntarily binding them to a set of ethical and professional standards.
Even if the Hippocratic Oath no longer directly governs modern medical practice, our future physician Andrew expressed his desire to see it included in medical school curricula as the foundational text of medical ethics. I agree. Besides its historical importance, the Oath prompts vital questions for the medical practitioner:
To whom or what am I primarily responsible in my professional practice? My patients, my art, my colleagues, myself?
If the Oath forbids assisted suicide and abortion, which modern medicine now condones, does this shift reflect the advancement of scientific understanding or only a growing tolerance of previously condemned practices?
Are there circumstances under which it is justifiable to break an oath? Where does one draw the line?
How does changing or abandoning an oath affect the integrity of a profession?
Hippocrates famously observed in his Aphorisms, "Life is short, and Art long." The art of medicine is indeed complex, requiring physicians to balance scientific knowledge, ethical considerations, and human compassion. Whether bound by an oath or not, every physician must navigate the intricate relationships between disease, patient, and practitioner.
The physician is the servant of the art, and the patient must combat the disease along with the physician.5
When I was seventeen, an astute physician and his dedicated team saved my life from a disease to which Hippocrates lost many of his own patients: malaria caused by the parasite Plasmodium falciparum. He wouldn’t have known he was fighting a parasite, of course, but he kept vigil at his patients’ bedsides, closely tracking their fevers and other symptoms, and offering worried family members the best of his professional knowledge: a fairly accurate prognosis of the disease’s likely course and outcome, including the exact day on which the patient might be expected to die or recover.
In the end, medicine is a team effort and the prize, we hope, is a long and healthy life. What do you think? Should doctors be required to take an oath? How has your life been impacted (for good or ill) by a healthcare provider or team? Feel free to weigh in or share your story in the comments.
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Mortimer J. Adler and V. J. McGill, Biology, Psychology, and Medicine, The Great Ideas Program, vol 9 (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1963).
W. H. S. Jones, ed., Hippocrates Collected Works I (London: Loeb Classical Library, 1923), ix, accessed February 18, 2025, https://archive.org/details/hippocrates0000hipp/page/n5/mode/2up.
Hippocrates, “Of the Epidemics” in Hippocrates | Galen, Great Books of the Western World (GBWW), vol. 9 (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 2003) 96.
Matthew 5:37
Hippocrates, GBWW vol. 9, 96.
What a great summary of our discussion. It reinforced the depth one could go in the practice of taking an oath. My big takeaway quotes from Hippocrates outside of the oath itself were both in here, and are certainly ones to ponder over the length of a career.
Really interesting. Thank you. I’m writing a novel at the moment where ancient medicine features heavily. I wondered if any of you were signed up to any relevant publications that might be useful ?