Premium
The ancient Hellenic and Hippocratic origins of head and brain terminology
Author(s) -
Panourias Ioannis G.,
Stranjalis George,
Stavrinou Lampis,
Sakas Damianos E.
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
clinical anatomy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.667
H-Index - 71
eISSN - 1098-2353
pISSN - 0897-3806
DOI - 10.1002/ca.22046
Subject(s) - hippocratic oath , terminology , glossary , medicine , meaning (existential) , head (geology) , literature , linguistics , classics , history , epistemology , philosophy , paleontology , art , biology , psychiatry
Corpus Hippocraticum , a collection of Hippocratic writings, is considered to be the first written monument of rationale medicine. This article focuses on a series of ancient Hellenic words which are cited in Hippocratic passages and have been adopted in current head and brain terminology either invariably, i.e., keeping their original meaning, or as component parts of newly formed terms. This study aims to demonstrate first that the deeper roots of current neuroanatomical terminology spread in Hippocratic writings and second, that ancient Hellenic remains a living language that would probably ever continue to play a catalytic role in the formation of neuroanatomical glossary by providing accurate, emblematic, and functional terms. Clin. Anat. 25:548–558, 2012. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.