Corpus Hippocraticum

The Corpus Hippocraticum was the first collection of important fragments of medical practice in early European history. Around 300 BC Pharaon Ptolemy Soter, the first of the Greek rulers in Egypt, ordered scholars at the new Library in Alexandria to collect documents containing all of human knowledge.

The works of Hippocrates, who was now acknowledged as the ‘father of medicine’, were among those most sought. They then tied a figurative knot around the package by attributing all of the writing to him.

The Corpus Hippocraticum or Hippocratic Collection is the name given to these writings. It is a library of about 60 works by different authors composed mostly between the late fifth and the fourth centuries BC. It reveals an approach to the problems of health and disease and in general a type of medicine such as the world had never seen before.

The Corpus Hippocraticum is full of richly detailed clinical information on the treatment of photophobia, excessive lacrimation, strabismus, nystagmus and a wide variety of external diseases.

The first known printed edition of the Corpus Hippocraticum was produced in 1525 by M. Fabius Calvus of Ravenna, who copied a single manuscript, Vaticanus Graecae 278, written in 1512. The Aldine edition was published in 1526 by Franciscus Anulanus and is considered the editio princeps.
Corpus Hippocraticum