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Introduction
My theme is the authority readers give authors; my case study is a particular episode in the history of medicine, the development of Hippocrates' authority among an ancient medical reading community. Scholars have been writing histories of medicine since Menon, the student of the philosopher Aristotle, wrote a history of medicine. 1By contrast the study of the history of reading is a relatively young academic area. Despite the differences in age between the history of medicine and the history of reading, these academic disciplines have much to offer each other. An historical anthropology of reading in medicine has the potential to illuminate the circulation of knowledge in historical medicine. After all, when we think of medicine, we may often think of empirical science such as dissection practices on cadavers or trial screenings of novel pharmaceuticals. And yet the practice of reading and writing supplement each of these empirical procedures in contemporary medicine. For example, pharmaceutical trials would be impossible without extensive written documentation about the progress and effect of particular drug combinations on different diseases and different classes of patients. In the heart of every medical research institution - the epicenter of empirical scientific medicine - is a library stocked with past case reports and published empirical investigations. Labs and libraries are equally a part of the structure of modern research hospitals. 2
But the combination of labs and libraries is not unique to modernity. Even Greco-Roman antiquity had the juxtaposition of medical knowledge gained through experience and medical knowledge gained through reading. Starting around 300 BCE in the Greek kingdoms after the death of Alexander the Great, the Hellenistic period in ancient history, several Greek physicians dissected and likely vivisected human bodies: these are the first scientific anatomical studies in the historical record. At the same time as the introduction of anatomical studies into Hellenistic medicine, doctors turned to read the works of Hippocrates of Cos, whose writings predated widespread anatomical knowledge. Hippocrates was a historical physician who was a contemporary of the ancient Athenian philosopher Socrates; he was said to have written a large body of medical works - case histories, surgical treatises, ethical treatises, theoretical accounts of the body...