The Hippocratic Oath, 400 BC – Timeless truths and rules

Hippocrates of Cos, sometimes called the father of Western medicine, was a Greek physician famous for rejecting ancient beliefs involving supernatural origins of disease. The rules of medical ethics bearing his name remain relevant even today.

We know very little about Hippocrates. His writings, the Hippocratic Corpus, offer advice on, among other topics, epilepsy, head injuries and gynecology, and were actually written by several authors, mainly between 420 BC and 370 BC. The Hippocratic School proposed that disease resulted from an imbalance of four humors (fluids): blood, black bile, yellow bile and phlegm. Physicians relied on treatment and dietary recommendations to restore balance. For example, citrus fruit was thought to be beneficial when phlegm was abundant. Recording a patient's medical history during treatment was also considered important (see The surprising history of health records).

Written by Hippocrates and / or other ancient Greeks, the Hippocratic Oath was taken by physicians who swore to practice medicine ethically. Modernized versions have been used throughout the centuries.

In the original oath, doctors swear by several gods to respect their medical teachers, respect patients' privacy and prevent patients from being harmed. They also swear never to give a patient a lethal drug or use a pessary (vaginal suppository) to induce abortion, nor to perform certain types of surgery or have sexual relations with patients.

Science reporter Robert Adler wrote: “Within a few centuries after his death, his writings and teachings became indiscriminately mixed with those of his followers and other Greek physicians. What united the Hippocratic Corpus was the belief that health and disease were entirely natural phenomena and that no god needed to be invoked. Over the next fifteen hundred years, as civilizations rose and fell, the core of medical knowledge passed from the Greeks to the Romans, from the Romans to Muslims and from Muslims to medieval Europe.”

The ancient Chinese physician Sun Simiao is known for his text "On the Absolute Sincerity of Great Physicians," often referred to as the Chinese equivalent of the Hippocratic Oath.

Image description: Part of the Paneth text was completed in Bologna in AD 1326. Here, a horn-playing demon, perhaps a metaphor for disease, is seen perched beside a text concerning the aphorisms of Hippocrates.

Historical figures mentioned in the article: Hippocrates of Cos (460 BC – 377 BC), Sun Simiao (581–682)

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