The
Invention of Medicine is both a scholarly history of early Greek
medicine and a compelling mystery story. The “From Homer to Hippocrates” discussion
(about 70 pages) is merely a prelude to the author’s main project, which is a
careful analysis of the books attributed to Hippocrates of Cos. As a group,
they have been associated with Hippocrates at least since the scholar Baccheios
of Alexandra, writing in the 280s BCE, attributed them to him. The Roman
physician Galen (about 170 CE) considered them products of a Hippocratic
“school,” but believed they were written by many different authors, including
in some cases, the great Hippocrates himself.
The
book’s highpoint is the author’s carefully reasoned hypothesis that the
historical Hippocrates wrote the texts we now know as books 1 and 3 of the
Epidemics, based on his practice experience in Thasos between 471 and 467
BCE. Other parts of the Epidemics were written by physicians up to
several generations later who emulated Hippocrates’ naturalistic approach. The
works identified as the “Hippocratic corpus” were grouped together as early as
the 280s BCE as representing the school of Hippocrates because of their
naturalistic, pragmatic, and ethical contents,
