What Hippocrates Knew and We Have Forgotten

Medical students hear about the Hippocratic Oath during the first days of medical school, but what does it actually state? Hippocrates was an ancient Greek physician who lived from 460 to 370 BC, so how relevant is his interpretation of medicine nowadays? Dr. John Patrick, a retired pediatrician and now a world-renown lecturer, explores these questions further.

"What the Hippocratic Oath gave substance to was a vision of a medical community with a predictable character of high ethical standards which could support justifiable trust between physician and patient with all the therapeutic benefit which such a community produces." Dr. Patrick argues that today, medicine has become more commercialized with a loss of these "communities of character." Therefore how can we currently put the Hippocratic oath into practice?

Related Links
Works by Hippocrates

New Ways to Treat Old Diseases by Martin Elliott

This lecture offers a survey of the brilliant new breakthroughs in treatments for heart defects and their implications for medical practice more generally. Advances in prenatal diagnosis, fetal intervention and methods of imaging and functional assessment will be presented. The possibilities of gene therapy, regenerative medicine and stem-cell based tissue construction will be described, as well as the opportunities for monitoring patients directly by remote technology. This might minimize the need for direct doctor:patient contact, further reducing cost, but it does present the problem of ever-increasing volumes of data to manage. What affects are these changes having today, and how might they affect the future of medical services in this country and beyond?
(from gresham.ac.uk)

About the Lecturer
Martin Elliott is Gresham Professor of Physic and Co-Medical Director at The Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, London (GOSH).