Die Heilkunst

What can medicine do? And where are its limits? How should a doctor present themselves at the bedside? Why and for whom is the prognosis so important? What relationships exist between health, illness, and the environment, climate? Such questions have been discussed since antiquity: later, all these texts were often attributed to the legendary Greek physician Hippocrates (2nd half of the 5th century BC), whose oath still resonates today. Medical historian Karl-Heinz Leven has selected the most interesting of these texts and provided extensive commentary – resulting in a new approach to ancient medicine, which in some respects seems foreign, yet at times also strikingly relevant.