Page:Greek Biology and Medicine.djvu/56

 the task a love of labor and perseverance, so that the instruction, taking root, may bring forth proper and abundant fruits. ...

"Possessing all these requisites to the study of medicine and having acquired a true knowledge of it, we shall thus in traveling through the cities, be esteemed physicians not in name but in reality. But inexperience is a bad treasure ... the nurse of timidity and audacity. For timidity betrays want of powers, and audacity a want of skill." 17

Ethically the most influential document in the history of medicine is the Hippocratic oath, still administered to the young doctors of Europe and America, though modified to suit ways of instruction which do not keep to the ancient paternal intimacy of teacher and disciple.

"I swear by Apollo the physician, and Aesculapius, and Health, and All-heal, and all the gods and goddesses, that, according to my ability and judgment, I will keep this Oath and this stipulation: to reckon him who taught me this Art equally dear to me as my parents, to share my substance with him, and relieve his necessities if required; to look upon his offspring in the same footing as my own