Hippocrates Is Not Dead

Hippocrates Is the Father of Medicine. This Anthology of Writings About Hippocrates Explains The Hippocratic Vision of Medicine and Its Relevance to Our Times.

This book is available as open access through the Knowledge Unlatched programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. We need to talk about Hippocrates. Current scholarship attributes none of the works of the 'Hippocratic corpus' to him, and the ancient biographical traditions of his life are not only late, but also written for their own promotional purposes. Yet Hippocrates features powerfully in our assumptions about ancient medicine, and our beliefs about what medicine – and the physician himself – should be. In both orthodox and alternative medicine, he continues to be a model to be emulated. This book will challenge widespread assumptions about Hippocrates (and, in the process, about the history of medicine in ancient Greece and beyond) and will also explore the creation of modern myths about the ancient world. Why do we continue to use Hippocrates, and how are new myths constructed around his name? How do news stories and the internet contribute to our picture of him? And what can this tell us about wider popular engagements with the classical world today, in memes, 'quotes' and online?

Dying Is Not Death examines from a traditional humanistic position the act of dying. The author views death as a universal experience that can and perhaps should force us to explore various technological intrusions upon it. Each chapter is an independent narrative, and some chapters tell stories of those struggling to die when confronted with the medical system's technological artifacts. Recounting different persons' experiences of death, Lee Hoinacki suggests that the medical system's conventional approaches to dying and death can distort our preparation for this most important experience. Borrowing from Jacques Ellul and Ivan Illich, Hoinacki acknowledges technology as an all-embracing system with powerful symbolic effects on the human condition and argues to a conflict between faith and technology. Indeed, with Ellul, he holds that in order to criticize technology, one must find some “place" outside the technological milieu that would act as a kind of Archimedean lever. One must somehow get to the Beyond to judge where one stands in the world.

Of the roughly seventy treatises in the Hippocratic Collection, many are not by Hippocrates (said to have been born in Cos in or before 460 BCE), but they are essential sources of information about the practice of medicine in antiquity and about Greek theories concerning the human body, and he was undeniably the "Father of Medicine."

"Aclear-sighted, heartfelt, and humane story of the needless tests and treatments that cripple healthcare....as a guide to good medicine, it may help us get back to the essence of what good doctors do: be with patients in healing." —Samuel Shem, M.D., author of The House of God and The Spirit of the Place In Hippocrates’ Shadow, Dr. David H. Newman upends our understanding of the doctor-patient relationship and offers a new paradigm of honesty and communication. He sees a disregard for the healing power of the bond that originated with Hippocrates, and, ultimately, a disconnect between doctors and their oath to"do no harm." Exposing the patterns of secrecy and habit in modern medicine’s carefully protected subculture, Dr. Newman argues that doctors and patients cling to tradition and yield to demands for pills or tests. Citing fascinating studies that show why antibiotics for sore throats are almost always unnecessary; how cough syrup is rarely more effective than a sugar pill; and why CPR is violent, invasive—and almost always futile, this thought-provoking book cuts to the heart of what really works, and what doesn’t, in medicine.

The Bible and Natural Philosophy in Renaissance Italy explores how doctors studied the Bible and other sacred texts in sixteenth-century Italy. Andrew D. Berns argues that, as a result of their training, they understood the Bible not only as a divine work but also as a historical and scientific text.