INTRODUCTION THE TITLE of this essay correctly indicates that it is about Hippocrates. Yet the content is largely concerned with the writings of Friedrich Hoffmann (1660-1742), Professor of Medicine and Physics at Halle from 1693 to 1742, and the author of an influential system of medicine. This requires some explanation. It is about Hippocrates, or the Hippocratic writings, in the sense that i...

Little is known about the history of spinal deformities in ancient Greece. The present study summarizes what we know today for diagnosis and management of spinal deformities in ancient Greece, mainly from the medical treatises of Hippocrates and Galen. Hippocrates, through accurate observation and logical reasoning was led to accurate conclusions firstly for the structure of the spine and secon...

ideas of maternal and paternal contributions to the creation of the foetus. We do not learn, however, whether the bestowal of paternity was peculiar to medicine or if other arts and sciences also gained a male parent at this time. As might be expected, in the practical arena physicians or communities of physicians who considered themselves the upholders of empiricism, of sound no-nonsense pract...

HIPPOCRATES, Pseudepigraphic writings: Letters-Embassy-Speech from the AltarDecree, ed. and transl. with an Introduction by Wesley D. Smith, Studies in Ancient Medicine 2, Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1990, pp. x, 133 (90-04-09290-0). In The Hippocratic Tradition (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1979) Wesley D. Smith investigated the origin both of our image of Hippocrates, Father of Medicine, and of...

Hippocrates (around 460−370 BCE) was a Greek physician and philosopher who is considered the father of modern medicine (Figure 1). The history of epidemiology typically starts with Hippocrates in about 400 BCE but then more than 2000 years are skipped until the birth of modern epidemiology in the 17th century CE with the work of John Graunt, followed by William Farr and John Snow in the 19th ce...

HIPPOCRATES, Pseudepigraphic writings: Letters-Embassy-Speech from the AltarDecree, ed. and transl. with an Introduction by Wesley D. Smith, Studies in Ancient Medicine 2, Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1990, pp. x, 133 (90-04-09290-0). In The Hippocratic Tradition (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1979) Wesley D. Smith investigated the origin both of our image of Hippocrates, Father of Medicine, and of...