The Medical Language of Hippocrates

Abstract

In my “Style and Literary Method of Luke” I have argued that the attempt to confirm by means of so-called technical medical terms the tradition that Luke and Acts were written by a physician has failed to establish the presence in these writings of words that were not used freely also by non-medical writers. Indeed, the attempt was bound to fail for the reason that unlike the present medical profession the ancient physician scarcely had a technical vocabulary at all. As Professor G. F. Moore there pointed out (pp. 53 f.), while modern medical terminology is largely made up of foreign words, the scientific words of the Greeks were native to the living language and congenial for ordinary use.