The Hippocratic Oath part 1

On the wall in my office sits a large framed art piece.  Ronda, my mother-in-law, drew and painted a beautiful rendition of Old English style writing, with large colorful drawings of different anatomical structures, including the vertebral spinal column, pelvis, a shoulder girdle, and an intrauterine fetus.  She had burned the edges of the page to give it an “aged” look.  As I began to read, I remember taking this oath both on the first day of medical school and on graduation day.  That was nearly 5 years ago.  The first paragraph says:

“I swear by Apollo, the Physician, Asclepius, Hygieia and Panacea and all the gods as well as goddesses, to keep according to my ability and my judgment, the following Oath and agreement:”

I wondered long ago who and what those entities were.  Why did these names have a place in our oath?  What was the reason that we have Greek traditions in this society?  How is modern medicine evolving?  Ancient practitioners believed in many different entities.  Medicine men of the Native American Tribes believed in Mother Earth.  Mayan practitioners believed in the Vision Serpent.  The Greeks and Romans impressed upon us in many ways.  We still have a Senate, and architecture all over the U.S. replicating Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian structures of old. 

Before Christianity was spread to the Greeks and Romans, the gods and goddesses were worshipped as those who could take away disease as well as cause them.  The goddess Febris, could cause fevers and cure it.  The Hindi goddess, Sittala, did the same.  Apollo was bringer and reliever of plagues as depicted in the Iliad.  The goddess Hygieia, the daughter of Asclepius, was the guardian of health or disease prevention, and Panacea, the goddess of healing. 

I remember reciting these words but not knowing what they exactly meant at the time of entering medical school, and then having an idea of how it related to the modern practice of medicine when I graduated.  It was revolutionary when it was written over 2500 years ago.  Prior to this time, doctors and magicians were practitioners of the same science.  William Osler wrote in “Evolution of Medicine,” that magicians and sorcerers were the only ones to cure disease, while doctors treated symptoms.   

Medicine in the past was an assortment of concoctions, potions, poultices, fumigations and the like.  We still have that today.  We still have spirituality that existed prior to Christianity and worshipped many different gods, where today we have religion based from many important figures, including Jesus Christ, Mohammed, Siddharthama Gautama Buddha, and the first Brahmins of Hinduism.  While centuries have passed and sorcerers and magicians and physicians practiced different traditions, we still practice new ones today.  Today, many Americans swear on the Bible an oath to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help me God, in a court of law.  Also, in America we have freedom to practice any religion, thus different oaths. 

The Hippocratic Oath, as the first of its kind to separate humanistic medicine and the practice of the inhumane, was and is fundamental for all physicians to remember.  It is an oath worth repeating and remembering.  We are trusted professionals, and we serve the public, the common people, because we care.  We swore to that.