attack on the written account of medicine by sophists as having nothing to do with the art of medicine is a discussion taken up by the fifth-century thinker Socrates in The Phaedo. Also, the treatise's interest of 'things in the sky and under the earth' also characterizes Aristophanes' Clouds (424 BC.) and Plato's Apology. Influence There are two main proponents when discussing the influences on the treatise, whether of philosophy on medicine or the reverse. Hans Diller attempted to show that the author's point of view was influenced mostly by Plato. Ludwig Edelstein argued the author characterized 'Hippocratic empiricism', "a methodological stance characterized by the rejection of all generalizations and resulting from the influence of Protagorean relativism on medical thought." The proponents for tracing influence in the opposite direction, from medicine to philosophy, argued that the work On Ancient Medicine influenced Protagoras. It is possible, however, that different thinkers could come to similar conclusions regarding natural philosophy and practice independently of one another. Authorship Since the work of Émile Littré in the nineteenth century, the treatise On Ancient Medicine has been scrutinized to aid in answering the 'Hippocratic question': the question about which of the works in the Hippocratic corpus were written by Hippocrates. Littré was the scholar most associated with advocating that On Ancient Medicine was written by Hippocrates. He thought that the treatise was the work to which Plato was referring in The Phaedrus. However, it is difficult to reconstruct the historical Hippocrates with our existing evidence amounting to a brief account in the Anonymous Londinensis papyrus, and a few references in Plato and Aristotle. Based on the information available for the treatise On Ancient Medicine, it is impossible to definitively answer the Hippocratic question. Notes References External links Greek text in Hippocratis Opera, I 1, De prisca medicina, ed. J. L. Heiberg, Leipzig/Berlin, 1927, pp. 36–55. Scholarly Bibliography on Ancient Medicine compiled by John Porter, University of Saskatchewan. Books about diseases Books about health care