AFORISMA. – More correctly aforisma, Greek ἀφωρισμός, “definition,” “maxim.” In medicine, the name Aphorisms refers above all to the homonymous little work by Hippocrates of Cos, the foremost Greek physician of the fifth century B.C. It comprises 406 aphorisms distributed among 7 sections, in which the principles of etiology, semiotics, prognosis, and medical dietetics are summarized in brief form and almost always with remarkable precision. Famous above all is the first aphorism, which opens the collection: “Life is short, art long, opportunity fleeting, experiment hazardous, judgment difficult.” This work, whose authenticity is almost universally accepted by modern philology, constituted for approximately two thousand years the most important text of the medical schools of Europe. The object, from the fourth century B.C. onward, of innumerable commentaries, the most important of which is that of Galen, the Aphorisms were translated into Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic, and Latin, and were repeatedly rendered in verse. In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the word aphorism was simply synonymous with the medical art. Modern science, despite the enormous distance separating it from antiquity, regards the Aphorisms of Hippocrates as the masterpiece of the Greek medical genius, and still considers not a few of the principles and facts first collected in that work to be valid.
In the modern age, various works took the title of aphorisms: the Aforismi of Montecuccoli on the art of war (1670), and the philosophical and ethical ones of Lichtenberg (1742–99), the Aforismi sulla saggezza della vita SCHOPENHAUER, ARTHUR (v.).