The Hippocratic Oath

In Our Time: Science

BBC

History

4.5 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 15 September 2011

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Hippocratic Oath. The Greek physician Hippocrates, active in the fifth century BC, has been described as the father of medicine, although little is known about his life and some scholars even argue that he was not one person but several. A large body of work originally attributed to him, the Hippocratic Corpus, was disseminated widely in the ancient world, and contains treatises on a wide variety of subjects, from fractures to medical ethics.Today we know that the Hippocratic Corpus cannot have been written by a single author. But many of its texts shaped Western medicine for centuries. The best known is the Hippocratic Oath, an ethical code for doctors. Celebrated in the ancient world, and later referred to by Arabic scholars, it offers medics guidance on how they should behave. Although it has often been revised and adapted, the Hippocratic Oath remains one of the most significant and best known documents of medical science - but there is little evidence that it was routinely sworn by doctors until modern times. With:Vivian NuttonEmeritus Professor of the History of Medicine at University College LondonHelen KingProfessor of Classical Studies at the Open UniversityPeter PormannWellcome Trust Associate Professor in Classics and Ancient History at the University of WarwickProducer: Thomas Morris.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.uk.
0:09.0	I hope you enjoy the program.
0:11.0	Hello, here's a quotation purportedly from two and a half. enjoy the crisis fleeting, experience perilous, and decision difficult.
0:26.2	That famous aphorism is believed to be the work of an ancient Greek doctor often described
0:30.7	as the father of modern medicine. His name was Hippocrates,
0:34.6	born in the 5th century BC and although we know little about his life he's probably just
0:38.6	as famous a day as he was in the antique world. Through the careful observation and logical deduction he brought to his work
0:46.3	Hippocrates is credited by some with founding a new school of medical thought but is best
0:50.9	known today as a supposed author of the Hippocratic Oath which lays out an ethical code for doctors.
0:57.0	Remarkably, this brief 300 word text continues to govern the behavior of physicians 2,500 years after it was first written down.
1:05.0	With me to discuss the Hippocratic Oath Ar Vivian Nutten,
1:08.0	emeritus professor of the History of Medicine at University College London,
1:12.0	Helen King, professor of Classical Studies at the Open University,
1:16.0	and Peter Porman, Welcome Trust Associate Professor in Classics and Ancient History at the University of Warwick.
1:22.0	Vivian Nutten.
1:23.0	Hippocrates is thought to have lived sometime in the fifth century
1:26.0	in a great classical period of Greek learning, scholarship,
1:30.0	art and philosophy,
1:31.0	but how much do we actually know about him?
1:34.0	Hippocrates is one of the most mysterious figures of antiquity.
1:38.0	We know almost nothing about him.
1:41.0	We know he came from a family of doctors, from the Greek island of course, who
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