News > Do You Know What the Hippocratic Oath Really Says?

Do You Know What the Hippocratic Oath Really Says?

When physicians emerged as a professional community, they needed a code of ethics. 

It begins with an oath to Apollo (as the god of medicine), and the original Greek text (1) bans the performance of abortions, (2) prohibits physicians from performing surgical procedures, and (3) instructs physicians not to share their medical knowledge with anyone else because they constitute “holy secrets.”