Frases de Hipócrates
Hipócrates
Fecha de nacimiento: 460 a.C.
Fecha de muerte: 370 a.C.
Hipócrates de Cos —en griego: Ἱπποκράτης— fue un médico de la Antigua Grecia que ejerció durante el llamado siglo de Pericles. Está clasificado como una de las figuras más destacadas de la historia de la medicina, y muchos autores se refieren a él como el «padre de la medicina»,[1][2][3] en reconocimiento a sus importantes y duraderas contribuciones a esta ciencia como fundador de la escuela que lleva su nombre. Esta escuela intelectual revolucionó la medicina de su época, estableciéndola como una disciplina separada de otros campos con los cuales se la había asociado tradicionalmente y convirtiendo el ejercicio de la misma en una auténtica profesión.[4][5]
Sin embargo, suelen entremezclarse los descubrimientos médicos de los escritores del Corpus hippocraticum, los practicantes de la medicina hipocrática y las acciones del mismo Hipócrates, por lo que se sabe muy poco sobre lo que el propio Hipócrates pensó, escribió e hizo realmente. A pesar de esta indefinición, Hipócrates es presentado a menudo como paradigma del médico antiguo. En concreto, se le atribuye un gran progreso en el estudio sistemático de la medicina clínica, reuniendo el conocimiento médico de escuelas anteriores y prescribiendo prácticas médicas de gran importancia histórica, como el juramento hipocrático y otras obras.[4][6]
No hay que confundirlo con Hipócrates de Quíos, matemático griego del siglo V a. C.,[7] que nació en la isla de Quíos, no muy lejos de la de Cos, cuyo hito más importante fue la cuadratura de la lúnula.[8]
Frases Hipócrates
„Lo que los medicamentos no sanan lo cura el hierro; lo que no cura el hierro, el fuego lo cura; lo que no sana el fuego debe considerarse incurable.“
Sect. VIII, aph. 6
Fuente: [Zozaya, Antonio, Editorial Maxtor, Aforismos y pronósticos de Hipócrates, 2008, Valladolid, 77-78, 84-9761519-0]
„Nunca, ni siquiera ante un ruego, administraré algún veneno letal como tampoco daré consejo para eso; nunca daré a mujer alguna supositorio para que aborte.“
El juramento de Hipócrates, en la obra “La historia del aborto” por Robert Jütte, pp 33, según la traducción Deichgräber.
„Time is that wherein there is opportunity, and opportunity is that wherein there is no great time.“
Precepts, Ch. 1, as translated by W. H. S. Jones (1923).
Contexto: Time is that wherein there is opportunity, and opportunity is that wherein there is no great time. Healing is a matter of time, but it is sometimes also a matter of opportunity. However, knowing this, one must attend to medical practice not primarily to plausible theories, but to experience combined with reason. For a theory is a composite memory of things apprehended with sense perception.
„As to diseases, make a habit of two things — to help, or at least, to do no harm.“
Epidemics, Book I, Ch. 2, Full text online at Wikisource
Variant translation: The physician must be able to tell the antecedents, know the present, and foretell the future — must mediate these things, and have two special objects in view with regard to disease, namely, to do good or to do no harm.
Paraphrased variants:
Wherever a doctor cannot do good, he must be kept from doing harm.
Viking Book of Aphorisms : A Personal Selection (1988) by W. H. Auden and Louis Kronenberger, p. 213.
Original: (el) ἀσκεῖν περὶ τὰ νοσήματα δύο, ὠφελεῖν ἢ μὴ βλάπτειν
„Related to this is the surgery of wounds arising in military service, which concerns the extraction of missiles.“
Hippocrates - The Physician 14, as translated by Paul Potter, Loeb Classical Library, Hippocrates Volume VIII.
Contexto: Related to this is the surgery of wounds arising in military service, which concerns the extraction of missiles. In city practice experience of these is but little, for very rarely even in a whole lifetime are there civil or military combats. In fact such things occur most frequently and continuously in armies abroad. Thus, the person intending to practice this kind of surgery must serve in the army, and accompany it on expeditions abroad; for in this way he would become experienced in this practice.
„To such a discovery and investigation what more suitable name could one give than that of Medicine? since it was discovered for the health of man, for his nourishment and safety“
Ancient Medicine
Contexto: [N]ecessity itself made medicine to be sought out and discovered by men, since the same things when administered to the sick, which agreed with them when in good health, neither did nor do agree with them. But to go still further back, I hold that the diet and food which people in health now use would not have been discovered, provided it had suited with man to eat and drink in like manner as the ox, the horse, and all other animals... And, at first, I am of opinion that man used the same sort of food, and that the present articles of diet had been discovered and invented only after a long lapse of time.... [I]t is likely that the greater number, and those who had weaker constitutions, would all perish; whereas the stronger would hold out for a longer time, as even nowadays some, in consequence of using strong articles of food, get off with little trouble, but others with much pain and suffering. From this necessity it appears to me that they would search out the food befitting their nature, and thus discover that which we now use: and that from wheat, by macerating it, stripping it of its hull, grinding it all down, sifting, toasting, and baking it, they formed bread; and from barley they formed cake (maza), performing many operations in regard to it; they boiled, they roasted, they mixed, they diluted those things which are strong and of intense qualities with weaker things, fashioning them to the nature and powers of man, and considering that the stronger things Nature would not be able to manage if administered, and that from such things pains, diseases, and death would arise, but such as Nature could manage, that from them food, growth, and health, would arise. To such a discovery and investigation what more suitable name could one give than that of Medicine? since it was discovered for the health of man, for his nourishment and safety, as a substitute for that kind of diet by which pains, diseases, and deaths were occasioned.<!--pp. 162-164
„I have not thought that it stood in need of an empty hypothesis, like those subjects which are occult and dubious… as, for example, with regard to things above us“
Ancient Medicine
Contexto: Whoever having undertaken to speak or write on Medicine, have first laid down for themselves some hypothesis to their argument, such as hot, or cold, or moist, or dry, or whatever else they choose, (thus reducing their subject within a narrow compass, and supposing only one or two original causes of diseases or of death among mankind,) are all clearly mistaken in much that they say; and this is the more reprehensible as relating to an art which all men avail themselves of on the most important occasions... For there are practitioners, some bad and some far otherwise, which, if there had been no such thing as Medicine, and if nothing had been investigated or found out in it... all would have been equally unskilled and ignorant of it, and everything concerning the sick would have been directed by chance. But now it is not so; for, as in all the other arts, those who practise them differ much from one another in dexterity and knowledge, so is it in like manner with Medicine. Wherefore I have not thought that it stood in need of an empty hypothesis, like those subjects which are occult and dubious... as, for example, with regard to things above us [meteorology, astronomy or astrology] and things below the earth [geology, Hades, ]; if any one should treat of these and undertake to declare how they are constituted, the reader or hearer could not find out, whether what is delivered be true or false; for there is nothing which can be referred to in order to discover the truth.<!--pp. 161-162
