(5th c. BC)
Greek physician. Hippocrates was a contemporary of Socrates . Little is known of him except that he was short, travelled much, and probably died at Larissa. The Corpus Hippocraticum or body of writing to which his name became attached in fact contains no part that can be reliably attributed to him. His fame as the ideal doctor, and the first to treat the body as a whole organism, rests on Plato (Phaedrus 270 a) and the subsequent escalating attribution of medical wisdom to him. The Hippocratic oath enjoining doctors to heal rather than to harm is possibly of Pythagorean origin.
Philosophy dictionary. Academic. 2011.