This is a sample of Hippocratic usa

This is a sample of Hippocratic usage, not a complete survey. Yet the conclusions necessary for our argument can be drawn with certainty. First, apart from the technical use of prophasis to mean exciting cause, the various words which denote cause in the general vocabulary of Greek writers are used without distinction. Usage varies from essay to essay, sometimes aitia and aitiai are restricted to what is held responsible, as opposed to real cause, but general Hippocratic usage shows no discrimination in its choice of words to denote general cause. Secondly, there is no one word consistently used to mean basic or real cause. About all that can be said is that our evidence indicates that prophasis is used less often, for basic cause and for general cause, than either aitia or aitiai. Hence, if we are to suppose that Thucydides modeled his use of prophasis on that of the medical writers, we ought to suppose, not that he used it with a special significance of basic cause, but, as Gomme believes with regard to references to the causes of the war, that there is no distinction between prophasis and aitia, except in the one obvious medical use at II, 49, which has no bearing on the general question. It should be observed, further, that prophasis in the meaning of general cause is not restricted to the medical writers, and is very unlikely to have originated with them. Herodotus too uses prophasis to mean general cause, several times. In Herodotus as in most non-technical writers, the word most often means "pretext" or "excuse," but occasionally it is used to mean simply "cause," as in IV, 79, 1: èmeire S čoeé oi kakós yevéoBa, èyévето ато трофаооs тоcтобe (cf. II, 161, 3).