The Collegial Network

Abstract

When one of us (P. M.) visited Timbuktu, Mali, the native physician, upon learning that a visiting physician was in town, went to the hotel. Although he spoke no English, our conversation, through an interpreter, immediately turned to medicine, lasted six hours, and included discussions of patients, practice, and medical education.

To hold him who has taught me this art as equal to my parents and to live my life in partnership with him, and if he is in need of money to give him a share of mine, and to regard his offspring as equal to my brothers in male lineage and to teach them this art— if they desire to learn it—without fee and covenant; to give a share of precepts and oral instruction and all the other learning to my sons and to the sons of him who has instructed me and to pupils who have signed the covenant and have taken an oath according to the medical law, but to no one else.

Hippocrates¹