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Hippocratic Oath. Twelfth-century Byzantine Greeks wrote the Hippocratic Oath in the form of a cross, trying to connect it to Christian ideas. Hippocrates (460-370 BC) was a Greek physician who is considered the father of medicine. His influence survives in the Hippocratic oath (a code of medical ethics) taken by medical students on completion of their training. Little is known about Hippocrates. He founded a medical school on the Aegean island of Cos, where his ideas on medical conduct and practice were implemented. He advocated a rational approach to medicine, believing that disease was caused by physical phenomena and not by the interference of the gods.

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