Doctor and Patient in Classical Greece

The medical literature of the Greeks from the classical, Hellenistic, and Roman periods is very full and of inexhaustible interest for the history of science, but its public, even among scholars, is small, particularly in Great Britain. On the theoretical and technical side independent study is likely to remain the preoccupation of a few, but on the practical and human side there is abundant material of historical and social interest that deserves to be more widely known. Among that material the present article is concerned only with the evidence from the fifth and fourth centuries B.C., the first age of scientific medicine among the Greeks. Some is to be found in commonly read authors, such as Plato, but for fuller details the only contemporary source of much value is the Corpus Hippocraticum, the mixed collection of medical writings from these centuries which has reached us under the name of Hippocrates, but in fact contains treatises, essays, pamphlets, and notes by the most various authors, as their styles and contents show.For English readers by far the most useful edition of any large part of the Corpus is the four volumes of the Loeb Hippocrates—i, ii, and iv by Dr. W. H. S. Jones, and iii by Dr. E. T. Withington, containing the surgical books. But this is not exhaustive; for the complete Corpus the most recent edition is still the ten volumes of Émile Littré, Œuvres complètes d'Hippocrate (Paris, 1839–61). This, like the Loeb, has translations opposite the text, introductions, and a few illustrations; it is now a rare book and still valuable in spite of its age.