Iannuccilli: The Pleasure of Hippocrates’ Tree

Iannuccilli: The Pleasure of Hippocrates’ Tree

We have a plane (Platanus) tree that sits overlooking the pond at our home in Becket, Massachusetts. So what, you say. Well, it’s just not any old plane tree. It is a derivative of the one under which Hippocrates taught over two thousand years ago, and ours originated from the plane tree that sits outside The Arnold Building at Brown, the former home of The Alpert Medical School’s administration offices. Some years ago, my good friend, Dr. Tom DeNucci gave us the shoot.

According to legend, Hippocrates, considered the father of medicine, taught his pupils the art of medicine under its spreading boughs on the island of Kos, Greece, some 2,400 years ago. 

At the 25th anniversary celebration of Brown’s Medical School in 2000, attendees received an unusual party favor from medical school graduate, Dr. Pardon Kenny — a tree sapling; an offspring of the ancient plane, a descendant of the tree under which Hippocrates taught. That gift, donated so that one-day medical students might continue to learn in the shade of its storied boughs, took root. The current Kos tree, only about 500 years old, is a descendant of the original. There, it is revered and cared for just as I do mine, in Becket.

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Tom gave me the shoot nestled in a bucket of mud. With care, I planted it twenty years ago, and it has taken, now standing at least twenty feet tall. My tree is in good company as saplings have been sent to other locales such as The Universities of Alabama, Mercer, Victoria, Yale, East Carolina, and Michigan. There are derivatives at The Countway Library in Boston and The National Library of Medicine in Washington.

Brown University’s now mighty Platanus stands in a plot adjacent to the sidewalk in front of The Arnold Building on Waterman Street, where many walking by can see it, sit under it and maybe even think of Hippocrates and his lessons.  In Becket, our Platanus is thriving, strong enough to have survived being bent over by crystalline ice in a recent storm. And it is now large enough for me to place a chair under it.

I walk by it often. In the silence of the pond area, I wonder, “Why do I have this tree?  Am I not so very lucky?” I think of Hippocrates’ Oath.

While today’s oath has been necessarily changed from that of the original, nonetheless it serves a purpose in recognizing the covenants of respect, integrity, education, the art of medicine, disease treatment, and prevention. One modem version, written by Louis Lasagna in 1964, ends with such phrases as “preservation of tradition and joy of healing.”

I look at my tree, reaching higher each year, appreciating my good fortune to be a physician. I care for it by trimming its boughs, tying it so that it will remain ever upright, and nurturing its soil. The tree reminds me of Hippocrates and his desire to teach, the symbol of his legacy.

 

 

Ed Iannuccilli is the author of "Growing up Italian" and "What Ever Happened to Sunday Dinner?" and "My Story Continues" can be found here.