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.
Case histories One significant portion of the corpus is made up of
case histories. Books I and III of
Epidemics contain forty-two case histories, of which 60% (25) ended in the patient's death. Nearly all of the diseases described in the Corpus are
endemic diseases: colds, consumption, pneumonia, etc.
Theoretical and methodological reflections In several texts of the corpus, the ancient physicians develop theories of illness, sometimes grappling with the methodological difficulties that lie in the way of effective and consistent diagnosis and treatment. As scholar Jacques Jouanna writes, "One of the great merits of the physicians of the Hippocratic Corpus is that they are not content to practice medicine and to commit their experience to writing, but that they have reflected on their own activity".
Reason and experience While the approaches range from
empiricism to a
rationalism reminiscent of the physical theories of the
pre-Socratic philosophers, these two tendencies can exist side-by-side: "The close association between knowledge and experience is characteristic of the Hippocratics," despite "the
Platonic attempt to drive a wedge between the two". The author of
On Ancient Medicine launches immediately into a critique of opponents who posit a single "cause in all cases" of disease, "having laid down as a
hypothesis for their account hot or cold or wet or dry or anything else they want". The method put forward in this treatise "could certainly be characterized as an empirical one", preferring the effects of diet as observed by the senses to cosmological speculations, and it was seized upon by Hellenistic
Empiricist doctors for this reason. However, "unlike the Empiricists, the author does not claim that the doctor's knowledge is
limited to what can be observed by the senses. On the contrary, he requires the doctor to have quite extensive knowledge of aspects of the human constitution that cannot be observed directly, such as the state of the patient's
humors and internal organs".
Epistemology and the scientific status of medicine The author of
The Art is at pains to defend the status of medicine as an art (
techne), against opponents who (perhaps following
Protagoras' critique of expert knowledge) claim it produces no better results against disease than chance (an attack served by the fact that doctors refused to treat the serious and difficult cases they judged to be incurable by their art). The treatise may be considered "the first attempt at general
epistemology bequeathed to us by antiquity", although this may only be because we have lost fifth-century
rhetorical works that took a similar approach. For this writer, as for the author of
On the Places in Man, the art of medicine has been wholly discovered. While for the author of
On the Places in Man "the principles discovered in it clearly have very little need of good luck", the author of
The Art acknowledges the practical limitations that arise in the therapeutic application of these principles. Likewise for the author of
On Regimen, the "knowledge and discernment of the nature of man in general—knowledge of its primary constituents and discernment of the components by which it is controlled" may be completely worked out, and yet in practice it is difficult to determine and apply the correct and proportionate diet and exercise to the individual patient.
Humours The Hippocratic Corpus explains diseases using the Four Humours in which are described a Phlegm, Yellow Bile, Blood and Black Bile. These medical writings associated each of the humours with a specific organ which goes as follows; blood with the heart, yellow bile with the liver, black bile with the spleen and phlegm with the brain. With each humour, there were specific properties that applied to changes in the fluids such as blood is hot and moist, phlegm is cold and moist, yellow bile is hot and dry and black bile is cold and dry. The authors of the Hippocratic Corpus described that these four humors play a very important role in our health as when there is a little or too much of one of the humours, a disease might occur.
Natural vs. divine causality Whatever their disagreements, the Hippocratic writers agree in rejecting divine and religious causes and remedies of disease in favor of natural mechanisms. Hippocratic medicine had been formulated to hold true to the belief that "medicine should be practiced as a scientific discipline based on the natural sciences, diagnosing and preventing disease as well as treating them." In addition to Greek poetry and tragedy, magicians, charlatans, and purifiers can also be considered responsible for the widespread of 'sacred' explanations. Doing this allowed them to step in and provide inefficacious remedies that could convince the gods to intervene and fix these sacred issues experienced by individuals. Thus
On the Sacred Disease considers that
epilepsy (the so-called "sacred" disease) "has a natural cause, and its supposed divine origin is due to men's inexperience and to their wonder at its peculiar character." An exception to this rule is found in
Dreams (
Regime IV), in which prayers to the gods are prescribed alongside more typically Hippocratic interventions. Though
materialistic determinism goes back in Greek thought at least to
Leucippus, "One of the greatest virtues of the physicians of the Hippocratic Collection is to have stated, in its most universal form, what was later to be called the principle of determinism. All that occurs has a cause. It is in the treatise of
The Art that the most theoretical statement of this principle is to be found: 'Indeed, under a close examination spontaneity disappears; for everything that occurs will be found to do so through something [
dia ti].'" In a famous passage of
On Ancient Medicine, the author insists on the importance of knowledge of causal explanations: "It is not sufficient to learn simply that cheese is a bad food, as it gives a pain to one who eats a surfeit of it; we must know what the pain is, the reasons for it [
dia ti], and which constituent of man is harmfully affected."
Natural approach to health and wellness The writers of the treatises in the Hippocratic Corpus emphasized a natural approach to health and wellness. During the Asclepius paradigm, Hippocrates used a natural way to treat disease. The most famous work in the Hippocratic Corpus is the
Hippocratic Oath, a landmark declaration of medical ethics. The Hippocratic Oath is both philosophical and practical; it not only deals with abstract principles but practical matters such as removing
stones and aiding one's teacher financially. It is a complex and probably not the work of one man. It remains in use, though rarely in its original form. Seemingly, the main and most problematic topic covered in urology was that of bladder disease in patients, especially when urinary tract stones (that is, stones within either the kidneys or the bladder) were present. Urinary tract stones, in general, have been seen within records all throughout history, even as far back as the ancient days of Egypt. Other than leakage of urine into the body cavity, another common complication was that of the cells of the testes dying due to the
spermatic cord inadvertently being cut during the procedure. In fact, due to these and other complications and the lack of antiseptics and pain medicines, the Hippocratic Oath opted for the avoidance of surgery – unless absolutely necessary – especially when concerning surgeries that dealt with the urinary tract and more so when stone removal was the intent. The Hippocratic texts describe wine as a powerful substance, that when consumed in excess can cause physical disorders, today known as intoxication. Although the negative effects of wine on the human body are documented within the Hippocratic Corpus, the author or authors maintain an objective attitude towards wine. During this time, those studying medicine were interested in the physical effects of wine, therefore no medical text condemned the use of wine in excess. According to the Hippocratic text, the consumption of wine significantly affects two regions of the body: the head and the lower body cavity. An overall effect of wine that all Greek doctors of the time observed and agreed on was its warming property. Therefore, wine's properties are described as "hot and dry." Wine was first defined as a food by all doctors. Directions for consumption varied based on gender, season, and other events in daily life. Men were encouraged to consume dark, undiluted wine before copulation, not to the point of intoxication, however enough to provide power and guarantee strength to the fetus. Patients with
pneumonia like illnesses would soak in a wine mixture and breath in the vapors with the intent to expel the pus from their lungs. Based on modern knowledge, this disease was
mumps, which causes
salivary glands under the ears to swell. It is remarkable that this ancient work describes symptoms so vividly that modern doctors can diagnose the cause a thousand years later. This section of the Hippocratic Corpus assumes that when looking at human disease and the health of humans, you must look at the seasons, winds and orientation of places, the nature of the water, the nature of the soil and the lifestyle of the inhabitants of a particular city.
Epidemics 1 goes on to describe the climate on two occasions and the diseases associated with them, called
constitutions. The symptoms described include more serious, sometimes lethal, fevers, eye infections, and dysentery.
On Diseases Jaundice is a disease that is mentioned numerous times throughout and is described as occurring in five ways. Jaundice is when the skin or eyes turn yellow. The Greek physicians thought of Jaundice to be a disease itself rather than what medical professionals know now to be a symptom of various other diseases. The Greeks also believed that there were five kinds of jaundice that can occur and report the differences between them. The first kind can quickly turn fatal. The skin appears to be green. The analogy made in the text is that the skin is greener than a green lizard. The several forms of jaundice that the Greek physicians proclaimed might be because jaundice occurs due to varying sicknesses like hepatitis, gallstones and tumors. The diverse set of symptoms were probably the effects of the sicknesses rather than the jaundice itself.
Empyemas An
empyema is a Greek word derived from the word which means "pus-producing". According to the Hippocratic Corpus, they can occur in the thorax, the uterus, the bladder, the ear, and other parts of the body. Along with the variety of skin diseases described in the Hippocratic Corpus is the suggested treatment. These treatments stem from the belief that dermatologic diseases were a result of imbalance in body humors. For relief from various dermatologic conditions, the Hippocratic text recommends spring water or seawater baths and topical application of a fatty substance as a form of treatment.
Menses Menses is another way of wording menstruation or blood flow discharge from the uterus. There are multiple sections within the works dedicated to different types of menses along with their understood meanings of the time. There is a large portion dedicated to what a doctor should expect of standard menses along with some slight variations. Within the
Diseases of Women I, the average amount of menses for healthy women should be somewhere around a half pint for around two-three days. The flow itself is considered to require the viewers judgment but does go on to say that it should flow like a blood from a sacrificial lamb, indicating the timeframe of the work, and that the blood should
coagulate readily. Fever is the outlier that have different treatments based on the treaty. Bathing with oils along with lily oil rubbed on the woman's head is recommended. Oil should also be applied to her uterus. Vapor baths in general are the main focus for treatment after childbirth. The change with a fever is to avoid bathing. Vapor treatment with an application using a hot towel is recommended on her lower stomach and back. A diet of boiled meal with rue or barley gruel is recommended seemingly for with or without a fever. A paragraph is dedicated to the experience in childbirth of the woman in question affecting the post childbirth reactions. Women are noted to not have an understanding of what sickness they may have or the pride of the woman causing her to not discuss their symptoms. The paragraph pleads for doctors themselves to be well-versed in the possible post-birth diseases that women may have and know how to spot it themselves. ==Style==