Six hundred years after AEsculapius came Hippocrates, of Cos, the Father of Medicine. He undoubtedly had the advantage of many Egyptian medical traditions and other Oriental medical sources, as well as the observations made in the hospitals and shrines of AEsculapius. He {366} wrote some great works in medicine that have never grown old, Young men do not read them, old men who are over-persuaded of how much progress is being made by their own generation in medicine neglect them. The busy practitioner has no time for them. The great teachers of medicine whom all the professors look up to and who think for us in each generation turn fondly back to Hippocrates, and marvel at his acumen of observation and his wonderful knowledge of men and disease. Sydenham thought that no one had ever written like him, and in our turn we honor Sydenham by calling him the English Hippocrates. Boerhaave, Van Swieten, Liancisi, the great fathers of modern clinical medicine, turned with as much reverence to Hippocrates as does Osler, the Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford, in our twentieth century. Hippocrates wrote 2,500 years ago, but his writing is eternal in interest and value. The famous oath of Hippocrates, which used to be read to all the graduates of medicine, well deserved that honor, for it represents the highest expression of professional dignity and obligation. There is a lofty sense of professional honor expressed in it that cannot be excelled at any period in the world's history. Among other things that Hippocrates required his adepts in medicine, his medical students when they graduated into physicians, to swear to was the following: "I will follow the system of regimen which {367} according to my ability and judgment I consider for the benefit of my patients, and abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous. I will give no deadly medicine to man, woman, or child born or unborn. With purity and with holiness I will pass my life and practise my art, Whatever in connection with my professional practice, or not in connection with it, I see or hear in the life of men which ought not to be spoken of abroad, I shall not divulge, as reckoning that all such should be kept secret. While I continue to keep this oath inviolate may it be granted to me to enjoy life and the practice of my art respected by all men in all times; but should I trespass and violate this oath may the reverse be my lot."