[Comments on the structure of some tracts of 'Corpus Hippocraticum']

A number of medical treatises belonging to the so-called Hippocratic Collection feature text units of equal or similar length (or doubled). These passages are particularly obvious at the end of treatises (as appendices) or in continuous series, where one such passage follows upon the other. The length coincides approximately with the length of the 'writing tablet' (jotter) mentioned in 'Epidemics' VI 8.7 and with the ancient Greek standard unit of measure applied for the payment of scribes, namely 100 epic verses. Although the passages do not provide a clue to the 'Hippocratic question', they possibly betray the ancient physicians' procedure of organizing scribal work. Any such modern explanation of the quantitative phenomenon is, however, hypothetical, all the more so as the philological observation of the phenomenon is not unproblematical.