50 Fun Facts About Hippocrates

By what title is Hippocrates traditionally known?

He is credited with prognosis, clinical observation and the systematic categorisation of diseases.

On which Greek island was Hippocrates born around 460 BC?

He was probably trained at the island's asklepieion, a healing temple.

What is the ethical pledge, still taken by doctors in modified forms, credited to Hippocrates?

Modern scholars think it was probably written after his death, in the fifth or fourth century BC.

He was named after his grandfather; what suffix distinguishes the famous doctor from him?

Two of his grandsons were also called Hippocrates, numbered III and IV.

Who was Hippocrates's first biographer and the source of most personal details about him?

Soranus wrote in the 2nd century AD, some 500 years after his subject.

What was the profession of Hippocrates's father, Heraclides?

Hippocrates learned medicine from both his father and grandfather.

Which two contemporaries mention Hippocrates in passing in their writings?

Plato calls him 'Hippocrates of Kos, the Asclepiad' in the Protagoras.

According to Galen, who was Hippocrates's true successor?

His sons Thessalus and Draco were also his students.

Where did Hippocrates probably die?

He was said to be 83, 85 or 90, though some claimed he lived to well over 100.

Hippocrates is credited as the first to believe that diseases were caused by what?

There is not a single mention of a mystical illness in the entire Hippocratic Corpus.

What were the four humours in Hippocratic medicine?

Illness was seen as an excess or deficiency of one of them; the theory was only disproved with the discovery of microbes.

Ancient Greek medicine was split between the Koan tradition of Hippocrates and which rival tradition?

The Koan doctors focused instead on patient care and prognosis.

Why did Greek medicine in Hippocrates's time know almost nothing of human anatomy?

This is why the rival school of doctors failed to tell apart diseases with similar symptoms.

In Hippocratic medicine, what was a 'crisis'?

Crises were expected on 'critical days', a fixed time after the disease began.

What Latin phrase sums up the Hippocratic idea that the body can heal itself?

Treatment aimed simply to ease this natural process, with rest and immobilisation 'of capital importance'.

What two liquids were the only ones ever used on wounds in Hippocratic medicine?

'Dry' treatment was preferred, and patients were kept clean and sterile.

What mixture did Hippocrates prescribe as a generalised treatment?

He also prescribed fasting, saying 'to eat when you are sick is to feed your sickness'.

Which folk saying may Hippocrates have originated by treating fevers with fasting?

In his day fever was thought to be a disease in itself.

What device named after Hippocrates used tension to set broken bones?

Traction stretched the skeleton to relieve pressure on the injured area.

Hippocrates reportedly measured a patient's pulse while taking a history to discover what?

He also noted complexion, pains, movement and excretions with care.

What diagnostic sign of chronic lung disease is Hippocrates credited with first describing?

Clubbed fingers are still sometimes called 'Hippocratic fingers'.

Shakespeare alludes to the 'Hippocratic face' of a dying person when describing whose death in Henry V?

The Hippocratic face is the change in countenance produced by death or long sickness.

Hippocrates is described as the first documented surgeon of which part of the body?

He used lead pipes to drain chest-wall abscesses, a technique still considered valid.

The Hippocratic Corpus's discussion of the rectal speculum is the earliest recorded reference to what?

Haemorrhoids were treated by ligating them and drying them with a hot iron.

Which condition did Hippocrates help demote from a divine affliction to a common brain disorder?

The treatise On the Sacred Disease argued it had a natural cause and that the brain was the seat of intelligence.

Which popular quotation attributed to Hippocrates is probably a misquotation?

'Walking is man's best medicine' is another line of unknown origin pinned on him.

Roughly how many treatises make up the Hippocratic Corpus?

It was collected in Alexandria and written in Ionic Greek by many hands; one scholar counted nineteen authors.

Why did all these treatises come to be known by Hippocrates's name?

The volumes were probably produced by his students and followers over many decades.

Which of these is a genuine treatise in the Hippocratic Corpus?

Others include Aphorisms, Prognostics and On the Sacred Disease.

Which two principles of medical ethics does the Hippocratic Oath establish?

It is the earliest expression of medical ethics in the Western world, and both principles remain central to modern practice.

Does the phrase 'First do no harm' (Primum non nocere) appear in the original oath?

A related phrase, 'either help or do not harm the patient', appears in the Epidemics.

Where is the oldest surviving manuscript of the oath held?

It dates from roughly the 10th-11th century, though papyrus fragments go back to the 3rd century AD.

Which practice does the original Oath forbid, although other Hippocratic works describe surgery?

The Oath also forbids giving poisonous drugs and abortive pessaries.

What modern medical oath did the World Medical Association draft in 1948?

In a 1989 survey only three of 126 US medical schools still used the original Hippocratic Oath.

Who wrote the secular modern version of the Oath, used by many US medical schools, in 1964?

It omits the prayer to the gods and pledges 'utmost respect for human life from its beginning'.

Which later Greek doctor, who lived from AD 129 to 200, perpetuated the Hippocratic tradition?

After Hippocrates, medical advancement stalled for centuries because his teachings were seen as too great to improve.

Beneath what, according to legend, did Hippocrates teach his pupils on Kos?

The current tree in Kos town is only about 500 years old, but may descend from the original.

A cutting from the Tree of Hippocrates was planted in 1961 on the grounds of which US institution?

Kos gave it as a gift to the United States; many medical colleges claim descendants of the tree.

In The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, Hippocrates's daughter is said to have been transformed into what?

A knight's kiss would turn her back into a woman; it is a version of the Melusine legend.

What is 'risus sardonicus', sometimes called the Hippocratic smile?

The most severe form of baldness is also called the Hippocratic form.

Hippocrates's legendary genealogy traces his father's line to which god of healing?

His mother's line was traced to Heracles.

What did researchers claim to have found in 2017 while restoring Saint Catherine's Monastery in Sinai?

The manuscript also held three illustrated herbal recipes by an anonymous scribe.

What is 'Project Hippocrates' at Carnegie Mellon an acronym for?

A lunar crater and a museum on Kos are also named after him.

In which two dialogues does Plato mention Hippocrates by name?

In Protagoras he is 'Hippocrates of Kos, the Asclepiad'; Phaedrus credits him with insisting on knowledge of the body's nature.

Which Thracian physician of Selymbria is said to have taught Hippocrates?

He is also said to have studied with the philosophers Democritus and Gorgias.

In what dialect of Greek is the entire Hippocratic Corpus written?

This is curious because Kos lay in a region that spoke Doric.

Of the 42 case histories in Epidemics I and III, roughly what share ended in the patient's death?

Nearly all the diseases described in the Corpus are endemic ones such as colds, consumption and pneumonia.

The Hippocratic Corpus was first printed as a unit in 1525 in which language and city?

The first complete Greek edition followed a year later from the Aldine Press in Venice.

Who wrote the earliest surviving reference to the Hippocratic Oath, in AD 43?

He was adamant that the oath forbade abortion.

In 2005 which country's leader declared doctors should swear an oath to him instead of the Hippocratic Oath?

The leader was Saparmurat Niyazov, known as Turkmenbashi.