A recent essay by M. Bennet Broner, ‘Navigating the complexity of ‘first do no harm’ in modern medicine‘, provided an excellent review of this principle.

However, as is so often the case, it misattributed the statement to the Hippocratic oath.

Certainly, the oath does contain elements of this sentiment, and is more fully expressed in another work of Hippocrates called Of the Epidemics.

But the term does not originate with the ancient Greek physician.