Water, Health and Disease in the Hippocratic Treatise Airs, Waters, Places

Abstract

Airs, Waters, Places is the only treatise from the Hippocratic Corpus that devotes substantial discussion to the effects of the internal usage of water on health and disease.¹ Elsewhere, in some of the dietetic treatises, we find brief discussions of water. For example, the author ofRegimen in Acute Diseases devotes a short passage to water as a drink, but this is only from the perspective of the treatment of acute diseases. More surprising is the fact that the treatiseRegimen , which contains the most detailed catalogue of foods and drinks in the Hippocratic Corpus, dedicates only one pithy and