Hippocratic Oath
oath of ethics taken by physicians
The Hippocratic Oath is an oath of ethics historically taken by physicians. It is one of the most widely known of Greek medical texts. In its original form, it requires a new physician to swear, by a number of healing gods, to uphold specific ethical standards. The oath is the earliest expression of medical ethics in the Western world, establishing several principles of medical ethics which remain of paramount significance today. These include the principles of medical confidentiality and non-maleficence. As the foundational expression of certain principles that continue to guide and inform medical practice, the ancient text is of more than historic and symbolic value. It is enshrined in the legal statutes of various jurisdictions, such that violations of the oath may carry criminal or other liability beyond the oath's symbolic nature.
Text of the oath
The original oath was written in Ancient Greek, between the fifth and third centuries BC. Although it is traditionally attributed to the Greek doctor Hippocrates and it is usually included in the Hippocratic Corpus, modern scholars do not regard it as having been written by Hippocrates himself. The oldest manuscript containing the oath dates to roughly the 10th–11th century, held in the Vatican Library, although papyrus fragments of the oath have been found as early as the 3rd century AD.
Below is the Hippocratic Oath, in Ancient Greek, from the 1923 Loeb edition, followed by the English translation:
Context and interpretation
The oath is arguably the best known text of the Hippocratic Corpus, although most modern scholars do not attribute it to Hippocrates himself, estimating it to have been written in the fourth or fifth century BC. Its general ethical principles are also found in other works of the Corpus: the work entitled Physician mentions the obligation to keep the "holy things" of medicine within the medical community (i.e. not to divulge secrets); it also mentions the special position of the doctor with regard to his patients, especially women and girls.
“Hippocratic Oath” enters the record as oath of ethics taken by physicians. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Hippocratic, Oath and oath can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q134990. VIAF identifies the subject as 175823466. The Library of Congress control number is n85174958. 1 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1923.
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This entry incorporates text from “Hippocratic Oath” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.