The Shelves · Medicine

Hippocratic Corpus (as collected and glossed at Alexandria)

Known · Probablein Alexandria?Conjecturedvery likely class

◇ Doubted: the attribution is uncertain. About sixty treatises of different authors and dates; which, if any, are by Hippocrates is unknown.

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I · The entry, in his form

In the table of Medicine

Conjecturedvery likely class

Hippocrates of Cos and others

c. 460–370 BCE. The physician under whose name some sixty medical treatises were gathered, very probably at Alexandria, into the Hippocratic Corpus. Alexandrian scholars glossed and edited them; Galen's story of the ships' books concerns a copy of the Epidemics.

Hippocratic Corpus

Opening words not preserved.

Length: not counted

◇ Doubted: the attribution is uncertain. About sixty treatises of different authors and dates; which, if any, are by Hippocrates is unknown.

Above, his entry form, filled from what we know. Below, ours.

II · Does it survive? Where to read it

Survives whole

Was it in Alexandria?

Known · Probable

Edited in Alexandria.

In the cupboard: edited, classified or commented on by the Library's scholars.

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III · In the show

The show has not yet spoken of this work.

IV · Sources and the living entry

Ancient references (2)
  • Galen, Commentary on Hippocrates' Epidemics III 2.4
  • Erotian, Glossary of Hippocratic Words
Modern scholarship (3)
  • J. Jouanna, Hippocrates, trans. M. B. DeBevoise (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999).
  • W. D. Smith, The Hippocratic Tradition (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1979).
  • H. von Staden, Herophilus: The Art of Medicine in Early Alexandria (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).

Entry checked 31 Oct 2026 · no corrections · Suggest a correction ›

HIPPOCRATIC CORPUS

Beside it in the cupboard