The Hippocratic Oath.

Abstract

pollo the physician, the sun god, drove the chariot of sun. He was the son of Zeus and Leto and the ,brother of Artemis, goddess of the moon. Apollo’s son was Asclepius, who was taught healing by the centaur Chauron; so skilled in medicine was he that he could restore the dead to life. This talent angered Pluto, god of the underworld, who persuaded Zeus to destroy Asclepius with a thunderbolt.’ The staff of Asclepius, always pictured with one serpent, is the symbol of the American Medical Association. The caduceus, the staff of Hermes, has two snakes and is surmounted by two wings; it also is sometimes used as a medical insignia. The daughters of Asclepius were Hygiea and Panaceia, whose names have been immortalized in the English language. By the 5th century BC, when Hippocrates was born on the Isle of Cos off the southwest coast of Asia Minor, the followers of Asclepius had for generations been the sole possessors of the knowledge of healing, using both diet and drugs.? I t seems likely that Hippocrates belonged to the school founded a century earlier by Pythagoras in Crotona, on the Italian peninsula. This philosophical school held that the human soul was immortal, that reincarnation existed, and that the works one did in this life determined his destination in the life to come. To Pythagoreans, medical skill was the greatest wisdom attainable, and medical standards could not be set too high. In addition to the wisdom of his oath, Pythagoras also left medicine many other familiar passages: “Life is short and