The Medical Aphorism
The terse clinical maxim that packs hard-won experience into a memorable rule — beginning 'Life is short, the art long.'
The medical aphorism is a short, pointed maxim that compresses clinical experience into a teachable, quotable rule about disease, treatment, and the limits of the healer's art. The Hippocratic 'Aphorisms' (4th c. BCE) is the genre's founding collection, opening with the celebrated line 'Life is short, the art long, the moment fleeting, experiment perilous, judgement difficult.' Memorized by physicians for over two thousand years and densely annotated by Galen and later Arabic and Latin scholars, it made practical bedside knowledge both portable and durable.
How it traveled
- Coa praesagiaKos · -370explains
- AphorismiKos · -370explains
- In Hippocratis De natura hominisRome · 175explains
- In Hippocratis Aphorismos Commentarii VIIRomeexplains
- In Hippocratis Epidemiarum IRomeexplains
- De crisibusRomeexplains
- In Hippocratis PrognosticumRomeexplains
Key passages(20)
In Hippocratis Aphorismos Commentarii VII · Galen
In Hippocratis Aphorismos Commentarii VII · Galen
In Hippocratis Aphorismos Commentarii VII · Galen
In Hippocratis Aphorismos Commentarii VII · Galen
In Hippocratis Aphorismos Commentarii VII · Galen
In Hippocratis Aphorismos Commentarii VII · Galen
In Hippocratis Aphorismos Commentarii VII · Galen
In Hippocratis Aphorismos Commentarii VII · Galen
In Hippocratis Aphorismos Commentarii VII · Galen
In Hippocratis Aphorismos Commentarii VII · Galen
In Hippocratis Aphorismos Commentarii VII · Galen
In Hippocratis Aphorismos Commentarii VII · Galen
In Hippocratis Aphorismos Commentarii VII · Galen
In Hippocratis Aphorismos Commentarii VII · Galen
In Hippocratis Aphorismos Commentarii VII · Galen
In Hippocratis Aphorismos Commentarii VII · Galen
In Hippocratis Aphorismos Commentarii VII · Galen
In Hippocratis Aphorismos Commentarii VII · Galen
In Hippocratis Aphorismos Commentarii VII · Galen
In Hippocratis Aphorismos Commentarii VII · Galen