disciples bound by a stipulation and oath
according to the law of medicine, but to none others. I will follow
that system of regimen which, according to my ability and judgement, I
consider for the benefit of my patients, and abstain from whatever is
deleterious and mischievous.

I will give no deadly medicine to anyone if asked, nor suggest any such
counsel; and in like manner I will not give to a woman a pessary to
produce abortion.

With purity and with holiness I will pass my life and practice my art.

(I will not cut persons labouring under the stone, but will leave this
to be done by men who are practitioners of this work.)

Into whatsoever houses I enter, I will go into them for the benefit
of the sick, and will abstain from every voluntary act of mischief and
corruption, and, further, from the abduction of females or males,
of freemen and slaves. Whatever, in connection with my professional
practice, or not in connection with it, I see or hear, in the life of
men, which ought not to be spoken of abroad, I will not divulge, as
reckoning that all such should be kept secret.

While I continue to keep this Oath unviolated, may it be granted to me
to enjoy life and the practice of the art, respected by all men, in all
times! But should I trespass and violate this Oath, may the reverse be
my lot!

(Adams, II, 779, cf. Littre, IV, 628.)

In his ideal republic, Plato put the physician low enough, in the last
stratum, indeed, but he has never been more honorably placed than in
the picture of Athenian society given by this author in the "Symposium."
Here the physician is shown as a cultivated gentleman, mixing in the
best, if not always the most sober, society. Eryximachus, the son of
Acumenus, himself a physician, plays in this famous scene a typical
Greek part(22a)--a strong advocate of temperance in mind and body,
deprecating, as a physician, excess in drink, he urged that conversation
should be the order of the day and he had the honor of naming the
subject--"Praise of the God of Love." Incidentally Eryximachus gives his
view of the nature of disease, and shows how deeply he was influenced by
the views of Empedocles:". . . so too in the body the good and healthy
elements are to be indulged, and the bad elements and the elements of
disease are not to be indulged, but discouraged. And this is what the
physician has to do, and in this the art of medicine consists: for
medicine may be regarded generally as the