“...Hippocrates, walking along the seashore, saw some bird...” and in short accord invented the enema!(1) Bartholomaeus’ rapid account describes how, after witnessing the bird “drawing seawater by the beak”, Hippocrates watched as it “poured [the seawater] into its anus” (hauriens...aquam marinam rostro per anum infudit), thereby extracting compacted excrement.(2) Hippocrates was inspired, and the aperient enema was born. 

The bones of the story were old. Herodotus noted that enemas were frequently employed in Egypt(3), and Pliny elaborated on their Egyptian nature, reporting that enemas had been discovered through the observation of Egypt’s most emblematic bird, the ibis(4). Where exactly Pliny got his information is unclear,(5) but the link between the ibis and the enema was frequently repeated, the story of its discovery retold by Cicero, Plutarch, Diodorus Siculus, and Aelian. Galen cited the ibis’ enema as just one example of animals restoring a healthful balance, common enough that he could reference it in passing (item Aegyptiam avem clysterem imitantem).(6) Meanwhile, the Pseudo-Gallenic author of Introductio sive medicus, used the location of the discovery as evidence of the inferiority of Egyptian medicine, derisively contrasting its empirical nature with the Greek medical art, which found its culmination in Hippocrates.(7)
 
A thousand years later, however, Bartholomaeus severed the connection with Egypt, not only omitting the geographical name, but also having the bird employ “saltwater” (aquam marinam);(8) previous iterations, including Isidore of Seville’s, had the bird drawing water from the freshwater Nile.(9) He also replaced Egypt’s most well-known bird with just “some bird” (quandam auem).
 
Furthermore, the enema-giving bird loses its place as sole star of the tale. In Pliny’s account, the ibis is the active participant in the encounter, the human discoverers anonymous and ill-defined. Similarly, in Plutarch, it is the ibis that “was the first to teach the use of medical aperients”; humans merely received the lesson.(10) In Bartholomaeus’ Practica, by contrast, there is an active human observer, who, even as the bird ignores his presence, not only recognises the value of what he is seeing, but insists on applying it (item uidens Ypocras idem fieri hominibus posse animaduertit. inde ergo sumpta occasione clisteria fieri iussit).(11) Moreover, this productive observer is Hippocrates, beacon of the Greek medical art, praised in Introductio sive medicus as the very antithesis of empirical Egyptian medicine. This not only awards the invention of the enema to the Greek tradition, it rehabilitates natural observation as a legitimate, fundamentally valuable aspect of the medical art. Little does it matter whether the incident is ever mentioned by Hippocrates himself...