Finally, my
machine is complete.
After seven years of failure the time machine
has successfully been miniaturized down to the size of a wrist watch
and the
kinks have been worked out of the date setting.
Tonight at
The contraption is set to the present date and my target date will be 250 BC. After setting the year to 250 BC I will activate the device and, God willing continue to write in this journal.
October 4,
250BC –
I’m not sure where I am. The device says I am in the correct destination but it is dark and there is echoing of every sound I make all around me. I will stay here until the sun rises and determine what I have gotten myself into.
October 5,
250BC –
I awoke to the brilliant light of the sun and gained my bearings. I was in a stone hallway in some sort of school or office building. Upon looking around I have decided I am definitely in a school. I wander into one class after jumping a student and stealing his clothes, I hope this doesn’t change the course of the future. In the room they are talking about a collection of scientific writings. I’m not positive, but I think they called them the Hippocratic Corpus; my Greek is a little rusty. Apparently there is a man named Hippocrates who they attribute all of these writings to. I’m not sure why they attribute them to him because they are not signed, but this seems to be the typical response.
October 5,
250BC –
I am amazed. After hours of listening to this lecture I have discovered much about the Hippocratic Corpus. It seems that they attribute it to Hippocrates of Cos because the stories they are told say he wrote it. I’m still not sure I believe this. I mean he would have had to have been 109 by the time he finished writing these. Anyway, the manuscripts that I have seen seem to all contain a few similarities, maybe this is why they think one man wrote them. All of the writings drive toward the goal of determining what causes disease and how to cure it. Contrary to what I previously believed it seems that even in this time they realized that the regimen, or lifestyle, of the patient played a significant role in the health of that patient. For example, if you eat some moldy cheese you could become ill, if you do not exercise you will be weak, and so on. Most confusing of all was the professor. He kept telling his students to be thankful that they could read these documents. I don’t understand, if they didn’t have these documents, why not just read some other documents. Well I guess that will remain unknown. I still doubt the claims of this Hippocrates guy though. I think I’ll go take a look at his past.
October 5,
475BC –
Well I made it
to
October 5,
475BC –
A dog just chased me for two miles from Hippocrates' house before I found a tree to climb. I hate it when dogs chase you. So I am now fairly positive this Hippocrates of Cos is a fraud, wait. I just over heard a conversation. The two people said Hippocrates was in the market. I have to confront this guy.
October 5,
475BC –
I have just watched Hippocrates for three hours. I believe I finally understand why the Hippocratic Corpus is named after him. While Hippocrates was giving a lecture in the crowded market he mentioned the writings he had made on his statements. Many people laughed at him when he told them they were in the form of a prose and not a poem. He laid out his arguments on how diseases were spread in a clear manner that stated if this happens then that can happen. He even had proof of the writings, though they did not resemble much of the ideas that I saw in the classroom last night, or, yesterday, or well whenever it was. There was a common thread between them though, the style. The style was consistent throughout the papers. So the prose must be the link between the true authors of the corpus and Hippocrates.
I have to get
some sleep before investigating this
further. Before I do though I wanted to
write something down before I forget.
When the professor told his class to be thankful it must have
been
because they had the writings at all.
There were no other writings.
Hippocrates was responsible for placing information like this
into a
concise easy to understand form that could then be copied and passed on
for
others to learn. This was the first
medical textbook. Well I must sleep
now. I’m very interested to see how
people used the writings contained in the Hippocratic Corpus. Next I
will try
to see what people thought of them. Oh also I found a web site
containing tablets from the ancient Greeks tonight. I noticed a
peculiar symbol that looked a lot like the Adidas symbol. I hope
that my lost shoe isn't somewhere in the past.
Disclaimer: Time travel is a fictitious possibility. I alone posses the secrets to it. If you attempt to uncover the powers of time travel and succeed I will be forced to go back in time and stop you from unlocking the mysteries of time travel. Understand?
Works Cited:
Ann Ellis Hanson, Hippocrates: The "Greek Miracle" in Medicine, Medicina Antiqua, http://www.medicinaantiqua.org.uk/sa_hippint.html. This website has a history of the Hippocratic Corpus and gives
information contained in the writings.
David Lindberg, The Beginnings of Western Science (Chicago, Chicago University Press, 1992) pp. 113-119.
Photograph of the Hippocratic Corpus
Website: University of Oklahoma History of Science Website
Weblink:http://hsci.cas.ou.edu/images/jpg-100dpi-10in/03Greek/Hippocrates/1588.html
My sources both gave information on the linking of the individual documents of the Hippocratic Corpus through the style used in them. The web page gave some information on the origin of Hippocrates and the styles of practices that physicians adopted because of Hippocrates. Lindberg provided more information on the future of the Hippocratic Corpus but some information on its basics. I obtained my stance that Hippocrates did not write the documents but that he was responsible for their style and their grouping by reading information about the documents themselves.
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