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“First Do No Harm” The Hippocratic Oath is the
most enduring tradition of medical ethics tracing it’s lineage to the Greek
physician Hippocrates in the 4th century BC. The ancient world had more to
contribute however. Roman medical treatises and Latin maxims have been handed
down, which augment the nucleus of the Hippocratic Oath and the fundamental
understanding of the human body. Galen was a Roman physician, many of whose
medical writings have survived. Indeed much of his knowledge was not even
appreciated fully until the explosion of scientific knowledge in the 19th
Century. Pronounced pree-muum-nohn-keh-reh, it is not known if Galen was
responsible for this Latin aphorism. Nevertheless it survives to this day as a
cornerstone of medical ethics and practice; an invocation to ensure the remedy
is not worse than the disease.
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60 Day No-Hassle