Hippocrates

400 Parnassus
UCSF Medical Center
Inner Sunset

Hippocrates by Costos Georgakas

A sign on the base of the statue reads:

Provided through the great generosity of Mr. and Mrs. John Nicholas Pappas.  Mr Pappas, A Greek emigrant from Kiparisi, Lakonia, Greece, and his wife, Jennie Pappas, donate this statue in appreciation of San Francisco the home of Mr. Pappas since 1905.

This statue was donated in 1987.

Hippocrates, is a sculptural example of five other versions of a marble sculpture attributed to Costos Georgacas. According to the Smithsonian, they date between 1967 and 1979 and are located on the campuses of University of Alabama in Birmingham, Alabama; Rutgers University in Piscataway, New Jersey; University of Illinois in Chicago, Illinois; University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona; and Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan

Although mostly of historic and traditional value and not necessarily required by medical schools, the Hippocratic oath is considered a rite of passage for practitioners of medicine in some countries. Nowadays the modernized version of the text varies among the countries and has been rewritten often in order to suit the values of different cultures influenced by Greek medicine.

Born around 460 B.C., Hippocrates is credited with being the first person to believe that diseases were caused naturally and not as a result of superstition and Gods, believing and arguing that disease was not a punishment inflicted by the gods but rather the product of environmental factors, diet, and living habits. While little is actually known about who originally wrote it, the Hippocratic Oath, is an oath historically taken by doctors swearing to practice medicine ethically.