" "And what will he
make of you?" "A physician," he said. And in the Phaedrus, in reply to
a question of Socrates whether the nature of the soul could be known
intelligently without knowing the nature of the whole, Phaedrus replies:
"Hippocrates, the Asclepiad, says that the nature, even of the body,
can only be understood as a whole." (Plato, I, 311; III, 270--Jowett, I,
131, 479.)
Several lives of Hippocrates have been written. The one most frequently
quoted is that of Soranus of Ephesus (not the famous physician of the
time of Trajan), and the statements which he gives are usually accepted,
viz., that he was born in the island of Cos in the year 460 B.C.; that
he belonged to an Asklepiad family of distinction, that he travelled
extensively, visiting Thrace, Thessaly, and various other parts of
Greece; that he returned to Cos, where he became the most renowned
physician of his period, and died about 375 B.C. Aristotle mentions him
but once, calling him "the great Hippocrates." Busts of him are common;
one of the earliest of which, and I am told the best, dating from Roman
days and now in the British Museum, is here represented.
Of the numerous writings attributed to Hippocrates it cannot easily be
determined which are really the work of the Father of Medicine himself.
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