A number of doctors participated in a ceremony reviving the Hippocratic Oath in its birthplace, the Asclepeion archaeological site on the Greek island of Kos in the Aegean Sea, where Hippocrates (460-370 BC), the ancient Greek "father" of medicine, lived and practiced, the International Health Tourism Center (IHTC) announced.


Doctors from east China's Anhui Province and representatives of medical associations and universities from Anhui and Shanghai, along with Italian doctors of Reproductive Medicine, took the authentic Hippocratic Oath during an event organized by IHTC that aims at cross border collaboration for high quality health tourism, according to an IHTC e-mailed press release.

The Hippocratic Oath is an ethical code which has been adopted as a guide to conduct by the medical profession throughout the centuries and is still used in graduation ceremonies of several medical schools across the world. In the oath, doctors pledge to do their best to treat their patients and live an exemplary professional and personal life.

The revival of the Hippocratic Oath is an initiative undertaken in cooperation with the Hippocratic Foundation as part of efforts to disseminate ancient Greek medical knowledge to today's and tomorrow's doctors worldwide, IHTC said.

Addressing the event, George Patoulis, IHTC's President, head of Athens Medical Association, and newly elected Governor of Attica, stressed the significance of strengthening such exchanges between medics from the West and the East. Peng Daiyin, head of Anhui University of Chinese Medicine, added:

"After what we lived, after what we felt, I will return to our university in Anhui and announce that from now on all our students will take the authentic Hippocrates Oath at Kos."

"Every doctor must once in his life come into this place to feel the energy, connect with the past, and understand that everything about Medicine really started here," Filippo Maria Ubaldi, Clinical Director of the General Center of Reproductive Medicine of Italy, noted on his part.

The physicians visited Greece on the occasion of a fertility forum organized by IHTC in Athens over the past weekend.