Source edition
Hippocrates. Oeuvres complètes d'Hippocrate, Vol. 1. Littré, Émile, editor. Paris: Baillière, 1839.
Source data
A Digital Corpus for Graeco-Arabic Studies · CC BY-SA 4.0
Cloned and adapted by Humanitext, with ongoing edits.
Summary
On Ancient Medicine is a medical treatise that criticizes the new medical approach of explaining diseases based on a few abstract "hypotheses" like heat or cold, while defending the validity of traditional medicine based on long-term experience and observation. The author begins by demonstrating that the origin of medicine lies in the historical development of proper dietary preparation to distinguish between the food of the healthy and the sick. Rejecting treatment theories that overemphasize simple elements like heat and cold, the text argues that bodily harm is caused not by abstract temperatures, but by dietary excesses or deficiencies, and by the disharmony and strength (dynamis) of bodily fluids (humors). Furthermore, the author dismisses philosophical attempts to discuss human nature abstractly, asserting that true medicine lies in the empirical investigation of how specific foods and lifestyles affect individual constitutions. In the final section, the treatise details how the physical shapes of bodily organs and the transformation of humors affect pathological states, concluding with an emphasis on the importance of meticulous physical observation.