Hippocratic Writings by Hippocrates

Author:Hippocrates
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 1983-04-18T16:00:00+00:00

REGIMEN IN ACUTE DISEASES

The effect of various regimens upon an ailing body. Apparently a polemic treatise written to refute certain doctrines held by the neighbouring school of medicine at Cnidus.

1. The authors of the book called Opinions from Cnidus have given a correct account of the symptoms in patients suffering from various diseases and, in some cases, of the ultimate effects of the disease. Thus far indeed anyone might go, if he inquired diligently of each patient what his symptoms were, without being a physician. But these authors have omitted a great deal of what the physician should learn from his patient without his telling him; details which vary from case to case but the interpretation of which may sometimes be of vital importance.

2. Whenever their interpretation of the symptoms leads them to prescribe a cure, my opinions differ from theirs very considerably. Nor is this the only criticism I have to make, for, in addition, they employ too few remedies. Thus, apart from acute diseases, they generally prescribe opening medicine and recommend their patients whey and milk to drink.

3. Of course, if these remedies were satisfactory and were adapted to the diseases for which they were prescribed, I should think very highly of them, seeing that so few were sufficient. But this simply is not the case. Later writers, however, have approached the subject in a more scientific way and enumerated the diets to be given to patients in various diseases. But no one so far has written any considerable work on regimen in general, although this is a most important omission. Some of these authors were not unaware of the multiplicity of the different ways in which each disease may present itself; but they made mistakes when they tried to set down clearly the number of individual diseases. It is not easy to count accurately if a different name is given to every morbid condition differing but slightly from another; and unless a disease has the same name in all its forms it will appear to be a different disease.

4. I believe that attention should be paid to all the details of the science [of healing]. Measures requiring to be done well and exactly must be performed well and exactly; where speed is essential, with speed; where cleanliness is required, with cleanliness; and where pain is to be avoided, the patient should be treated so as to cause the minimum of pain. All such things should be done considerably better by the physician than by another.

5. I would single out for praise the physician who particularly excels in the treatment of acute diseases, for these cause the greatest number of deaths. By acute diseases are meant the conditions which earlier doctors have named pleurisy, pneumonia, brain-fever and causus, and conditions resembling them which usually show continued fever. For in the absence of an epidemic of a disease of the plague type, when the cases of illness are scattered, many more die of these conditions than all the others together.

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