June Focus

[摘要] In a recent radio quiz programme where contestants are asked the origin of quotations, one of the questions was to identify the origin of ‘Ars longa, vita brevis.’ The answer, for those like me who didn't know, is Hippocrates, in his Aphorisms. (After a moment's thought, this is surprising. Surely Hippocrates didn't speak Latin? My Dictionary of Quotations has the original as ‘o βιoς βραχυς η δɛ τɛχνη μακρν’, which is more likely, if incomprehensible). The interest is in discovering that it was Hippocrates who first described medicine as an art. Or perhaps it's a problem of the translation. Does τɛχνη really mean ‘art’? Or does the Latin ‘ars’ translate well as the modern ‘art’? The BJGP would welcome answers from classical scholars. I personally dislike ‘art’, preferring to think of what I do as a craft (not creative but a set of skills learnt from a master, and refined over a working lifetime). All of us can, however, agree that what we do depends on values, attitudes, behaviour and circumstances as much as, or more than the science.

[学科分类] 卫生学