When Hippocrates (or perhaps a contemporary) wrote these words, some
time after 430 BC, he and his colleagues could do little for either good
or harm to sufferers from infectious disease. Indeed, they themselves were
at particular risk. Thucydides, describing the so-called plague of Athens
of 430 BC (probably not bubonic plague, but unidentified) in his
History of the Peloponnesian War, writes that “mortality
among the doctors was the highest of all, since they came more frequently
in contact with the sick.”I am
grateful to Prof. Malcolm Dando for helpful comments on an earlier draft
of this article.