Any young man who begins his medical career must take the "oath of Hippocrates." Hippocrates is considered the father of medicine, the enemy of superstition, the pioneer of rationalism and a valuable source of wisdom.

The statues and drawings depict him as a serious old man with a wrinkled forehead, who seems to be constantly thinking of new ways to heal patients. Hippocrates' oath is one of the most famous medical texts in ancient Greece and the first expression of ethical standards in medicine.

But, in fact, Hippocrates' oath is only attributed to the famous scientist of antiquity, because the author of the text is not known with certainty, according to The Conversation .

The real Hippocrates

Hippocrates, by Peter Paul Rubens, 1638. Photo: Wikimedia

The truth is that not only the oath, but also the other 60 treaties we call the Corpus Hippocraticum are anonymous. They have been written over the centuries in many Greek dialects.

The texts contain different ideas about the body and healing. That is why today's scientists state unequivocally that it could not have been written by a single man. The philosopher Plato left us the only account of Hippocrates, an account almost contemporary with him.

We know from Plato that Hippocrates came from the island of Cos, located off the coast of present-day Turkey, and that he taught medicine for a fee. But it is not known for sure what his ideas were about healing.

Photo: AP

Any other details you might read about Hippocrates are the fruit of the imagination, because there are no recorded facts about its existence. Plato's references place Hippocrates around 430 BC, but we do not know the exact date of his birth and death.

It is not known to whom the oath of Hippocrates really belongs

Hippocrates is an extreme example of people's desire to tell stories and establish founders. Various parts of the medical treatises of ancient Greece were compiled to create the personality of Hippocrates and, later, an entire biography .

People compiled his family trees and speculated about his education and character, without any proof. So we imagine Hippocrates as a caring and attentive person, only because some ancient Greek treatises recommend careful observation of patients.

Photo: Wikimedia

The treatise " On Sacred Disease " says that epileptic seizures do not come from the gods, but from the imbalance of phlegm in the body. So we think of Hippocrates as a man who rejected all superstitions.

And as one of the surviving treaties is the oath, Hippocrates also boasts very high moral standards.

What does Hippocrates' oath say?

Most of Hippocrates' oath was not about treating patients at all. Instead, he says doctors should train the sons of their colleagues for free and take care of their aging teachers.

The document belongs to any community of ancient doctors, it is clear that its main concern was the identity of doctors as a group. Even the famous lines about banning euthanasia and abortion are much more vague than we think.

In fact, Hippocrates' oath does not forbid euthanasia as we now understand it, that is, the choice of a person suffering from an incurable disease to die.

The word is Greek and means "good death," but for an ancient Greek, a good death was that of a young man dying on the battlefield.

The joining of these very different ancient documents and their attribution to Hippocrates took place a few centuries after the death of the Greek scientist. Perhaps it is easier for us to imagine the origins of medicine and medical ethics as one person, not an anonymous committee.

Hippocrates became an idealized figure, the perfect physician. In the history of medicine , we have imagined the character of Hippocrates to match what we believe doctors or medicine itself should be.