The Hippocratic Book of Prognostics

Abstract

Clinical prediction plays a vital role in clinical care, as it informs healthcare professionals, patients, and their relatives of the possible disease outcome, helping them to make a medical decision and improve health outcomes, if possible. Much more credit is often given to a physician for a correct prognosis than for the acute diagnosis or skilled treatment that underlies his statement about the course of the disease and its termination. Hippocrates established medicine as a scientific profession based on clinical observation and rational inquiry. Hippocrates and his followers focused more on prognosis than diagnosis. He mastered the art of prognosis based on the patient’s signs and symptoms of diseases. The Book of Prognostics is a treatise attributed to him and fully dedicated to this prognostic approach. This book alone is sufficient to prove his greatness in terms of medical care and the art of healing. In this paper, his prognostic approach toward diseases with the help of signs and symptoms will be explored.

Keywords

• hippocrates
• prognosis
• diagnosis
• signs and symptoms