Hippocrates - Hippocratic Corpus

Hippocratic Corpus

The Hippocratic Corpus (Latin: Corpus Hippocraticum) is a collection of around seventy early medical works from Alexandrian Greece. It is written in Ionic Greek. The question of whether Hippocrates himself was the author of the corpus has not been conclusively answered, but the volumes were probably produced by his students and followers. Because of the variety of subjects, writing styles and apparent date of construction, scholars believe Hippocratic Corpus could not have been written by one person (Ermerins numbers the authors at nineteen). The corpus was attributed to Hippocrates in antiquity, and its teaching generally followed his principles; thus it came to be known by his name. It might be the remains of a library of Kos, or a collection compiled in the 3rd century BC in Alexandria.

The Hippocratic Corpus contains textbooks, lectures, research, notes and philosophical essays on various subjects in medicine, in no particular order. These works were written for different audiences, both specialists and laymen, and were sometimes written from opposing view points; significant contradictions can be found between works in the Corpus. Notable among the treatises of the Corpus are The Hippocratic Oath; The Book of Prognostics; On Regimen in Acute Diseases; Aphorisms; On Airs, Waters and Places; Instruments of Reduction; On The Sacred Disease; etc.