Gesnerus 1960. Jahrgang/Volume 17. Heft/Fascicule 3/4 [antikvár]

GESNERUS Vierteljahrsschrift für Geschichte der Medizin und der Naturwissenschaften Revue trimestrielle d'histoire de la médecine Jahrgang /Vol. 17 1960 Heft / Fase. 3/4 Epidemics and Infectious Diseases at the Time of Hippocrates. Their Relation to Modern Accounts * By Rudolph E. Siegel, M.D. Department of Medicine, Buffalo General Hospital, Buffalo (New York) The chapters on Epidemic Diseases in the Hippocratic books soon will make strange reading. They will become unfamiliar to physicians of the Western world because of eradication of insect vectors, elimination of pathogenic bacteria and large scale immunizations. Moreover, chemotherapy is bound to change the natural course of these diseases. We no longer have the pessimistic outlook of Hippocrates that in most cases human nature cannot overcome these forces.1 The Roman physician, Asclepiades once said that Hippocrates' books on epidemic diseases read like "a meditation on death". The seven books on Epidemics would fill about 250 good sized printed pages. The first and third book are most likely from the hand of Hippocrates himself. One characteristic of these books is that diagnostic names were not assigned to the description of diseases even if numerous cases of the same clinical pattern were collected. The entire account resembles the diary of a travelling physician, who, after a days hard work, jotted down his observations on weather condition, location of cilies, the particular * This paper was given, in abbreviated form, as lecture at a Meeting of the Medical Historical Society of Western New York on January 24 1960 in Buffalo (N. Y.). 1 Hippocrates, Sämtliche Werke, ins Deutsche übersetzt und ausführlich kommentiert von Robert Fuchs, München 1895, three volumes (later referred to as Fuchs 1, 2 or 3). Here: Fuchs 1: Die kritischen Tage, chapter II, 430 (also Kuehn, Medicorum Graecorum opera quae extant, Leipzig 1825, Vol. XXI: Hippocrates, T. 1, p. 149). 77