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Hippocrates was an ancient Greek physician who is commonly referred to as the ""Father of Medicine"". He revolutionized medicine in ancient Greece by establishing it as a discipline distinct from other fields and brought together a collection of medical knowledge into a systematic science.
Hippocrates was born around 460 BC on the Greek island of Kos, located in the Aegean Sea near the coast of modern-day Turkey. He was born into a family of healers - his father, Heraclides, was a physician. Hippocrates received his early education from his father as well as from the philosopher Democritus who was also from the island of Kos and learned the art of medicine.
By the end of the 5th century BC, Kos was known as the Asklepieion, considered a healing temple and destination for those seeking medical assistance. As a young man, Hippocrates likely trained and practiced medicine at this temple before traveling across Greece and studying medicinal herbs and remedies. He spent several years travelling through Thessaly, Thrace, and locations along the Sea of Marmara learning herbal lore, diagnoses, and treatments from local healers. Through these journeys, Hippocrates gathered knowledge and expanded his medical understanding substantially before returning to Kos to establish his own practice.
The most famous story of Hippocrates comes from the year 430 BC. Athens, engaged in the Second Peloponnesian War, was struck by an epidemic that may have been typhoid fever or bubonic plague. Invoking the concept of the ""healing god"" who embodied the ideal physician, the Athenians called on Hippocrates to come to their aid. He is said to have ""sketched the course of the disease accurately and prescribed recourses to it"". Though the actual details of this account may be more mythical retelling, it speaks to the respect and notoriety Hippocrates had achieved as a physician in Greece at that time.
Around this time Hippocrates began teaching students his ideas and approach to medicine - emphasizing careful observation and documentation of patient symptoms to determine the best treatment approach. He firmly believed that good health resulted from harmony between body systems and nature. He rejected the common idea that illnesses were caused by the gods or supernatural forces. He gained loyal students who followed his teachings and methods, working alongside patients as well as each other, and this group or school coalesced into the ""Hippocratic School of Medicine"" on Kos.
Hippocrates served as an exemplar to his students not only in skill and knowledge but in character. The Hippocratic Oath, a code of medical ethics still influential today, bears his name and reflects the compassion, honesty and high ideals he inspired in them. Among its tenets are vows to treat patients to the best of one's ability, respect their privacy, teach the next generation, and never do harm or injustice. He wrote of the importance of confidentiality between patient and physician and is credited with separating the practice of healing from religion, believing clinical practice should be governed by science and medicine rather than ritual restrictions.
Hippocrates authored the Hippocratic Corpus, a collection of some 60 early medical works from antiquity strongly associated with his teachings and medicinal practice. The most famous of these works is the treatise On Airs, Waters, and Places which focuses on the effect of the environment on health. This work also reflects Hippocrates’ belief that public health depended on a clean environment and an understanding of how climate, water sources, geology and seasons impact well-being. Other major works traditionally attributed to him are Prognosis, Regimen in Acute Disease, The Sacred Disease, On the Surgery, and On the Articulations.
While Hippocrates himself wrote nothing of surgery in the texts of the Corpus, this discipline was an established practice on Kos where he trained. The famous ancient Roman physician Galen later praised this Hippocratic treatment of dislocated and broken bones, torn joints and other trauma to extremities, crediting his predecessor for reducing morbidity and mortality. Trauma surgery was crucial on the battlefield and fractures are described in Hippocratic writings. The tension bandage invented to bind broken ribs may also date back to Hippocrates himself.
The most famous portrait we have of Hippocrates comes from Roman times, centuries after his life. A muscular old man with long hair, sunken eyes and a wrinkled face gazes keenly but kindly, eliciting both authority and benevolence. While the portrait was painted long after his death, it aligns with Plato’s physical description of Hippocrates as an old but vigorous man and Aristotle’s characterization of his personality as thoughtful and dignified.
By separating the art of healing from religion and superstition, Hippocrates created the framework for medicine as a field guided by science. He turned away from prognostics and divination, instead teaching his students to methodically gather case histories from patients and make environmental, behavioral and dietary observations to discern the best treatments. In doing so, Hippocrates introduced the concept that positive and negative symptoms were important factors in tracking disease and approaches to care.
He created a theoretical model of health and illness that contrasted harmony and disease through the interaction of four bodily humors - blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile. An excess or deficiency in any one of these humors was believed to cause illness, and Hippocratic treatments sought to restore balance. For example, fever indicated an excess of blood so treatments aimed to counter symptoms through cooling, reducing fluids and restricted diets. Digestive issues signaled too much black bile or phlegm - so Hippocratic cures relied on induced vomiting or bowel evacuation to expel excess fluids from the body.
Hippocratic teachings extended to women's reproductive health, pregnancy and childbirth. Generation theory at the time postulated that men provided the ""spark"" of life to shape inherited characteristics while women grew the fetus from menstrual fluids and blood. Regulation of menstrual cycles along with fertility were key for female wellness. Treatments for gynecological complaints included fumigations, pessaries, potions and lifestyle recommendations around diet, bathing and exercise to release ""bad humors"". For adverse pregnancy symptoms, Hippocratic interventions ranged from bloodletting and strict diets to surgical embryotomies.
But it was in the area of epidemics and endemic diseases that Hippocratic medicine perhaps had its widest influence. By pioneering epidemiology as a science - systematically analyzing how disease spreads through populations based on environment, behaviors, time of year, weather and more - Hippocrates created an enduring methodology to predict, understand and treat disease occurrence. This approach was crucial in an era that lacked awareness of microorganisms, and Hippocrates used careful observation of disease patterns and outcomes within groups of people to guide interventions and policy.
During Hippocrates’ life and the two centuries following his death, his teachings, techniques and medicinal recipes were widely practiced throughout Greece. Eventually they spread to ancient Rome as well where Galen, Rufus and others expanded upon his works even further. But after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, much of Hippocratic knowledge was neglected or lost in Europe during the Middle Ages aside from some preservation in the Byzantine Empire.
It was the works of the Islamic Golden Age scholars, who extensively studied ancient Greek and Roman texts, that saved Hippocratic medicine from being forgotten. Islamicate physicians like Rhazes, Avicenna and Averroes translated his writings on mathematics, astronomy, medicine and philosophy into Arabic during the 8th-13th centuries. In the 12th century, as medical schools and universities began to flourish again in Italy, medieval Europe renewed its interest in Hippocratic teachings as well. -
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