‘Hippocrates Now’

At medical school, we learn Hippocrates. But we often misidentify his teaching as a single-authored scholarship, and mistake Hippocrates oath as unchallengeable doctrine.

According to the publisher, “current scholarship attributes none of the works of the ‘Hippocratic corpus’ to him, and the ancient biographical traditions of his life are not only late, but also written for their own promotional purposes. Yet Hippocrates features powerfully in our assumptions about ancient medicine, and our beliefs about what medicine — and the physician himself — should be. In both orthodox and alternative medicine, he continues to be a model to be emulated.”

This book, therefore, will “challenge widespread assumptions about Hippocrates and will also explore the creation of modern myths about the ancient world. Why do we continue to use Hippocrates, and how are new myths constructed around his name? How do news stories and the internet contribute to our picture of him? And what can this tell us about wider popular engagements with the classical world today, in memes, ‘quotes’ and online?”