Source edition
Hippocrates. Oeuvres complètes d'Hippocrate, Vol. 5. Littré, Émile, editor. Paris: Baillière, 1846
Source data
A Digital Corpus for Graeco-Arabic Studies · CC BY-SA 4.0
Cloned and adapted by Humanitext, with ongoing edits.
Summary
This work is a classical medical treatise that examines the nature of bodily humours and their effects on human health and disease. The author begins by presenting the properties and directions of fluid flow within the body, emphasizing the importance of physical signs and excretions for clinical diagnosis. It then provides practical guidelines for determining critical periods, indicating when to avoid acute medication and how to guide and evacuate humours based on cyclical timing. The discussion progresses to physiological phenomena, including the metastasis of disease causes within the body, the influence of external stimuli, and the analogy between gastric function and plant growth. In the latter half, the treatise classifies pathogenic factors into congenital, regional, and seasonal changes, and analyzes how individual constitution and age interact with these external environments. Ultimately, the work systemizes practical medical knowledge by detailing the courses of various diseases in relation to environmental and meteorological conditions.