Bom of a family of priest-physicians, and inheriting all its traditions and prejudices, Hippocrates was the first to cast superstition aside, and to base the practice of medicine on the principles of inductive philosophy. It is impossible to trace directly the influence exercised upon him by the great men of his time, but one cannot fail to connect his emancipation of medicine from superstition with the widespread power exercised over Greek life and thought by the living work of Socrates, Plato, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Herodotus, and Thucydides. It was a period of great intellectual development, and it only needed a powerful mind such as his to bring to bear upon medicine the same influences which were at work in other sciences. It must be remembered that his training was not altogether bad, although superstition entered so largely into it. He had a great master in Democritus, the originator of the doctrine of atoms, and there is every reason to believe that the various “asclepia” were very carefully conducted hospitals for the sick, possessing a curious system of case-books, in the form of votive tablets, left by the patients, on which were recorded the symptoms, treatment, and result of each case. He had these records at his command; and he had the opportunity of observing the system of training and the treatment of injuries in the gymnasia. One of his great merits is that he was the first to dissociate medicine from priestcraft, and to direct exclusive attention to the natural history of disease. How strongly his mind revolted against the use of charms, amulets, incantations, and such devices appears from his writings; and he has expressly recorded, as underlying all his practice, the conviction that, however diseases may be regarded from the religious point of view, they must all be scientifically treated as subject to natural laws (De Acre, 29). Nor was he anxious to maintain the connexion between philosophy and medicine which had for long existed in a confused and confusing fashion. His knowledge of anatomy, physiology, and pathology was necessarily defective, the respect in which the dead body was held by the Greeks precluding him from practising dissection; thus we find him writing of the tissues without distinguishing between the various textures of the body, confusing arteries, veins, and nerves, and speaking vaguely of the muscles as “flesh.” But when we come to study his observations on the natural history of disease as presented in the living subject, we recognize at once the presence of a great clinical physician. Hippocrates based his principles and practice on the theory of the existence of a spiritual restoring essence or principle, φυ<πj, the vis mcdicαtrix naturae, in the management of which the art of the physician consisted. This art could, he held, be only obtained by the application of experience, not only to disease at large, but to disease in the individual. He strongly deprecated blind empiricism; the aphorism “ή πe7pa σφaKepη, η κpiσιs χαλιπη” (whether it be his or not), tersely illustrates his position. Holding firmly to the principle, νοΰσων ψυσιes iητpο'ι, he did not allow himself to remain inactive in the presence of disease; he was not a merely “expectant” physician; as Sydenham puts it, his practice was “the support of enfeebled and the coercion of outrageous nature.” He largely employed powerful medicines and blood-letting both ordinary and by cupping. He advises, however, great caution in their application. He placed great dependence on diet and regimen, and here, quaint as many of his directions may now sound, not only in themselves, but in the reasons given, there is much which is still adhered to at the present day. His treatise ∏epl cdpων, υSiτων, κal τόπων (Airs, Waters, and Places) contains the first enunciation of the principles of public health. Although the treatises ∏∈pl κρίσιμων cannot be accepted as authentic, we find in the Προγνωστικόν evidence of the acuteness of observation in the manner in which the occurrence of critical days in disease is enunciated. His method of reporting cases is most interesting and instructive; in them we can read how thoroughly he had separated himself from the priest-physician. Laennec, to whom we are indebted for the practice of auscultation, freely admits that the idea was suggested to him by study of Hippocrates, who, treating of the presence of morbid fluids in the thorax, gives very particular directions, by means of succussion, for arriving at an opinion regarding their nature. Laennec says, “Hippocrate avait tenté Γauscultation immediate.” Although the treatise ∏epl νοΰσων is doubtfully from the pen of Hippocrates, it contains strong evidence of having been the work of his grandson, representing the views of the Father of Medicine. Although not accurate in the conclusions reached at the time, the value of the method of diagnosis is shown by the retention in modern medicine of the name and the practice of “Hippocratic succussion.” The power of graphic description of phenomena in the Hippocratic writings is illustrated by the retention of the term “facies Hippocratica,” applied to the appearance of a moribund person, pictured in the Prognostics. In surgery his writings are important and interesting, but they do not bear the same character of caution as the treatises on medicine; for instance, in the essay On Injuries of the Head, he advocates the operation “of trephining” more strongly and in wider classes of cases than would be warranted by the experience of later times.

The Hippocratic Collection consists of eighty-seven treatises, of which a part only can be accepted as genuine. The collection has been submitted to the closest criticism in ancient and modern times by a large number of commentators. (For full list of the early commentators, see Adams’s Genuine Works of Hippocrates, Sydenham Society, vol. i. pp. 27, 28.) The treatises have been classified according to (1) the direct evidence of ancient writers, (2) peculiarities of style and method, and (3) the presence of anachronisms and of opinions opposed to the general Hippocratic teaching,—greatest weight being attached to the opinions of Erotian and Galen. The general estimate of commentators is thus stated by Adams:— “The peculiar style and method of Hippocrates are held to be conciseness of expression, great condensation of matter, and disposition to regard all professional subjects in a practical point of view, to eschew subtle hypotheses and modes of treatment based on vague abstractions.” The treatises have been grouped in the four following sections :—(1) genuine; (2) those consisting of notes taken by students and collected after the death of Hippocrates; (3) essays by disciples; (4) those utterly spurious. Littré accepts the following thirteen as absolutely genuine:—(1) On Ancient Medicine (∏∈pi apχal∙ηs iητρικηs)', (2) The Prognostics (Προγνωστικόν) ; (3) The Aphorisms ('A,φoρισμol); (4) The Epi-demies, i. and iii. (Έπιόημιων a κal γ') ; (5) On Regimen in Acute Diseases (∏epΙ Sιaiτηs oζeωv); (6) On Airs, Waters, and Places (∏tpι aepωv, ΰδάτων, κdl τόπων) ; (7) On the Articulations (∏tpl Άρθρων) ; (8) On Fractures (∏∈pl aγμωv) ; (9) The Instruments of Reduction (Moχ ∖ ικ0s); (10) The Physician’s Establishment, or Surgery (Κατ’ ι∙ητpeiov) ; (11) On Injuries of the Head (∏epl τωv cv κeφaλy τρωμάτων) ; (12) The Oath ( a Ορκos) ; (13) The Law (ti0μos). Of these Adams accepts as certainly genuine the 2d, 6th, 5th, 3d (7 books), 4th, 7th, 8th, 9th, and 12th, and as “pretty confidently acknowledged as genuine, although the evidence in their favour is not so strong,” the 1st, 10th, and 13th, and, in addition, (14) On Ulcers (∏epl iκκωv) ; (15) On Fistulas (∏epl συριγγών) ; (16) On Hemorrhoids (∏epi αιμορροΐδων) ; (17) On the Sacred Disease (∏epl ιepr,s νούσον). According to the sceptical and somewhat subjective criticism of Ermeτins, the whole collection is to be regarded as spurious except Epidemics, books i. and iii. (with a few interpolations), On Airs, Waters, and Places, On Injuries of the Head (“insigne fragmentum libri Hippocratei”), the former portion of the treatise On Regimen in Acute Diseases, and the “obviously Hippocratic” fragments of the Coan Prognostics. Perhaps also the Oath may be accepted as genuine; its comparative antiquity is not denied. The Aphorisms are certainly later and inferior. In the other noir-Hippocratic writings Er∙ merins thinks he can distinguish the hands of no fewer than nineteen different authors, most of them anonymous, and some of them very late.

The earliest Greek edition of the Hippocratic writings is that which was published by Aldus and Asulanus at Venice in 1526 (folio); it was speedily followed by that of Frobenius, which is much more accurate and complete (fol., Basel, 1538). Of the numerous subsequent editions, probably the best was thatof Foesius (Frankfort, 1595, 1621,Geneva, 1657), until the publication of the great works of Littré, Oeuvres complètes d’Hippocrate, traduction nouvelle avec le texte grec en regard, collationnée sur les manuscrits et toutes les éditions, accompagnée d’une introduction, de commentaires médicaux, de variantes, et de notes philologiques (10 vols., Paris, 1839-61), and of F. Z. Ermerins, Hippocratis et aliorum medicorum veterum reliquioe (3 vols., Utrecht, 1859—64). See also Adams (as cited above), and Reinhold’s Hippocrates (2 vols., Athens, 1864-67). Daremberg’s edition of the Oeuvres choisies (2d ed., Paris, 1855) includes the Oath, the Laιv, the Prorrhetics i book i., the Prognostics, On Airs, Waters, and Places, Epidemics, books i. and iii., Regimen, and Aphorisms. Of the separate works attributed to Hippocrates the editions and translations are almost innumerable·; of the Prognostics, for example, seventy editions are known, while of the Aphorisms there are said to exist as many as three hundred. For some notice of the Arabic, Syriac, and Hebrew translations of works professedly by Hippocrates (Ibukrat or Buk-rat), the number of which greatly exceeds that of the extant Greek originals, reference may be made to FliιgeΓs contribution to the article “Hippokrates” in the Encyklopädie of Erseh and Gruber. They have been partially catalogued by Fabricius in his Bibliotheca Graeca.

In 1551 a marble statue of Hippolytus “Portuensis,” of uncertain date but not later than the 5th century, was dug up in Rome; it is now to be seen in the Vatican. He is represented as seated upon an episcopal throne, Wearing the Greek pallium, over which the Roman toga is thrown. On the sides of the throne is inscribed in Greek the rude Easter Cycle of which he is known to have been the author; behind is given an imperfect list of his numerous works. The catalogues given by Eusebius, Jerome, and Nicephoros differ slightly in details; but all bear witness to his diligence as a writer. The extant fragments were first collected by Fabricius {Hippolyti Opera gr. et lat., 2 vols, fol., Hamburg, 1716-18), and were afterwards reprinted by Galland in the second volume of his Bibliotheca Veterum Patrum (1766). See also Migne, Curs. Patr. Gr., vol. x. They include fragments of commentaries on various books of Scripture, a treatise “On Christ and Antichrist,” an “expository” (άποδίίκτίκή) discourse “To the Jews,” a fragment “To the Greeks” or “On the Universe,” tracts “Against Noetus,” “Against Beronand Helix,” and “On the Holy Theophany,” fragments of homilies (in which kind of composition he particularly excelled), and a few short quotations preserved by the author of the Chronicon Paschale. The appendix in Fabricius, containing doubtful or spurious pieces, includes “A Discourse on the End of the World, and on Antichrist, and on the Second Coming of our Lord Jesus Cln·ist,” also a short account of the twelve apostles, stating where each of them laboured and where each of them died, a list of the seventy apostles, heads of the canons of Abulides or Hippolytus as used b'y the ./Ethiopian Christians, and the canons of the Church of Alexandria. Of the spuriousuess of the last mentioned at least there can be no doubt. A new interest in Hippolytus as an ecclesiastical writer was awakened among scholars about 1851 in connexion with his Omnium Hcεresium Refutatio, which has an interesting history. As an anonymous MS. of the 14th century it had in 1842 been brought among various other manuscripts from Mount Athos to Paris by Minoides Mynas, a learned Greek who had been commissioned by the French Government to search for such treasures, and had been deposited in the great national library where it was registered as a work On all Heresies. It failed for some time to attract any special notice; but the attention of Μ. Emmanuel Miller, an official of that institution, having been at length excited by some fragments of Pindar and of an unknown lyric poet which it contained, he was led to examine it more closely and to adopt the conclusion that it was the continuation of the fragment entitled Philosophumena, printed in the Benedictine edition of Origen as the work of that author. Under this persuasion he offered it for publication to the university of Oxford, from whose press it appeared in 1851 under his editorship, bearing the title Originis Philosophumena, siνe Omnium Hcercsium Refutatio. It was at once welcomed by the learned world as a literary treasure of singular value; but it was almost immediately perceived that, though Miller had certainly judged rightly in affirming it to be a continuation of the fragmentary Philosophumena, hè had as certainly erred in attributing its composition to Origen, whose authorship of the previously known portion had already been disputed by Huet, Heumann, and Gale. By Jacobi and Duncker in 1851, who were speedily followed by Gieseler, Bunsen, Wordsworth, and Dollinger, it was with increasing confidence claimed for Hippolytus, to whom it is now attributed with almost entire unanimity by critics,—the arguments of Baur (Thcol. Jahrbb., 1853) in favour of the presbyter Caius, and still more those of Armellinus {Be prisca refutatione hoercseon, Rome, 1863) in favour of Novatian, having been found tobe quite unconvincing.

Originally it consisted of ten books, of which, however, only eight survive, namely, the first and the fourth to the tenth inclusive. Book i. gives an account of the different schools of ancient philosophy—Greek, Indian, and Druidical; books ii. and iii. appear to have dealt with the doctrines and mysteries of the Egyptians and Chaldaeans respectively; book iv. (which is slightly defective at the commeneemeut)treats of Chaldaean horoscopy andEgyptian theurgy; books v.-ix. dispose of the various heresies which had asserted themselves within the Christian Church. These are taken up in chronological order and arranged in five main groups, the Ophite, Simonist, Basilidean, Valentinian or Docetic, and Noetian. Whether they be regarded as attempts to Christianize paganism, to conciliate Judaism, or to gnosticize Christianity, their unscriptural character is invariably insisted on. The entire work is summarized in book x. The value of the Refutation as a whole, in its bearing on the history of the apostolic and subapostolic ages, and on the critical problems arising out of that history, can hardly be overestimated.

Since its first publication by Miller (Oxford Clarendon Press, 1851) it has been edited by Lagarde {Hippolyti Romani quae feruntur omnia Greece, Gottingen, 1858), by Duncker and Schneidewin, (Göttingen, 1859), and by Cruice (Paris, 1860). The Refutation as well as the other extant Works and Fragments of Hippolytus are to be met with in an English translation in the “Ante-Nicene Christian Library” (Edim, 1868-9).

See Bunsen, Hippolytus and his Age (1852; 2d ed., 1854; Germ, ed., 1853); Döllinger, Hippolytus u. Kallistus (1853; Engl transl., Edin., 1876); wordsworth, St Hippolytus and the Church of Rome in the Third Century (1853); Cruice. Etudes sur de nouveaux documents historiques empruntés au livre des Philosophumena, et relatifs au commencement du Christianisme (1853); Volkmar, Hippolytus u. die römische Zeitgenossen (1855); Lipsius, Zur Quellenkritik des Epiphanias (1865), and Quellen der ältesten Ketzergeschichte (18Ÿ5); Harnack, Zur Quellenkritik der Geschichte des Gnostizismus (18Ï3-74). Lipsius and Harnack occupy themselves largely with the question as to the relation between the Refutatio and a shorter tιeatise which can be shown to have formed the basis of the works of Epiphanius and Philaster. See also Jacobi, art. “Hippolytus,” in Herzog-Pitts Real-Encyclopädie (1880).

HIPPOLYTUS, St, according to the Roman breviary, was one of St Lawrence’s converts, who, when summoned before the emperor Valerian on account of the practice of his religion, made a public profession of Christianity. First beaten with rods, he was finally delivered over along with all his family to death, the mode of execution in his case being similar to that by which Hippolytus the son of Theseus perished. The mythical character of this legend, which, however, can in part be traced as far back as to Prudentius (Hym. 11), is recognized by Döllinger (see his Hippolytus u. Kallistus, chap. ii.). This saint, along with Casianus, is commemorated by the Roman Church on August 13. He is the patron of Mexico.