Helen King, Hippocrates Now

To those familiar with Helen King’s scholarship, the subject of her latest book may come as something of a surprise, and the execution even more so. Despite the title, it is not really about Hippocrates, nor is it really about medicine, either ancient or modern. Rather, it is about people’s perceptions and misperceptions, for better or for worse, of those things. Yet this examination of the idea, or ideas, of Hippocrates in the contemporary world is both necessary and timely. King sets out her stall in the Introduction, asking where we should attempt to draw the line between the use and the abuse of ancient sources (p.2), and while the rest of the book makes it very clear that the contemporary reception of Hippocrates falls very much in the latter category, she starts out on an optimistic footing by suggesting that this can simultaneously and potentially be viewed somewhat more

Library science · Rest (music · Scholarship · Subject (documents · Surprise · The Internet · Computer Science · History of Science and Medicine · Medicine · Psychology · Classics · History · Law