Aphorism

APHORISM. - More correctly aphorism, Gr. ἀφωρισμός, "definition," "maxim." In medicine, under the name Aphorisms, what is meant par excellence is the work of the same name by Hippocrates of Cos, the greatest Greek physician of the 5th century B.C. It comprises 406 aphorisms distributed in 7 sections, in which, in brief form and almost always admirable for its precision, the principles of etiology, semiotics, prognostics and medical dietetics are summarized. Famous among all is the first aphorism that opens the collection: "Life is short, the art long, the occasion fleeting, the experiment hazardous, the judgment difficult." This work, whose authenticity is almost universally admitted by modern philology, constituted for about two thousand years the most important text of the medical schools of Europe. The object, from the 4th century B.C. onward, of very numerous commentaries, among which the most important is that of Galen, the Aphorisms were translated into Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic and Latin, and several times put into verse. In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance the word aphorism was without question a synonym for the medical art. Modern science, despite the enormous distance that separates it from ancient science, regards the Aphorisms of Hippocrates as the masterpiece of Greek medical genius, and considers still valid not a few principles and data that are found gathered for the first time in that work.

In the modern age several works took the title of aphorisms: the Aphorisms of Montecuccoli on the art of war (1670), the philosophical-ethical ones of Lichtenberg (1742-99), the Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life of Schopenhauer (v.).

Adalberto Pazzini