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HIPPOCRATES
Hippocrates Hippocrates (460-377 B.C.) was and early and very influential Greek physician. He was born on the island of Kos (Cos) and was known as a superb doctor. He is credited with distinguishing between superstition and medicine, debunking the myth-based causes of illness, and defining of ethical behavior on which the Hippocratic oath is based.
In 412 B.C., Hippocrates described an outbreak a disease that was probably influenza in the city of Perinthus. It was the first recorded incident of the flu. The disease is believed to have originated with ducks, which were first domesticated around 2500 B.C.
Kos (15 hours from Pireaus, 3½ hours from Rhodes, 2 hours to Bodrum Turkey) is said to be the hometown Hippocrates , who is said to have taught his pupils in a square that now lies in the shadow of the medieval fortress in the town of Kos. In the square is a huge plane tree supported by column that many will tell you was the same tree that Hippocrates lectured under. Don't believe them: plane trees live only 500 years and Hippocrates lectured over 2,300 years ago.
Among the ruins found in Kos are Aesculapium, containing Hippocrates's medical school and the 4th century infirmary of Antiquity. The ruins sit on the side of a hill and consist of three terraces connected by a staircase. At the bottom of the lower terrace is a spring that Hippocrates former patients drank from.
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Websites on Ancient Greece: Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Greece sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Hellenistic World sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; BBC Ancient Greeks bbc.co.uk/history/; Perseus Project - Tufts University; perseus.tufts.edu ; ; Gutenberg.org gutenberg.org; Illustrated Greek History, Dr. Janice Siegel, Hampden–Sydney College hsc.edu/drjclassics ; The Greeks: Crucible of Civilization pbs.org/empires/thegreeks ; Cambridge Classics External Gateway to Humanities Resources web.archive.org/web; Ancient Greek Sites on the Web from Medea showgate.com/medea ; Greek History Course from Reed web.archive.org; Classics FAQ MIT classics.mit.edu
Hippocrates' Contribution to Medicine
Hippocrates, known as the "Father of Modern Medicine", established a medical school at Cos and is the most important figure in ancient Greek medicine. Hippocrates and his students documented numerous illnesses in the Hippocratic Corpus, and developed the Hippocratic Oath for physicians, which is still in use today. He and his students also created medical terminology that is part of our vocabulary today. Medical words included acute, chronic, epidemic, exacerbation, relapse, and others. The contributions to ancient Greek medicine of Hippocrates, Socrates and others had a lasting influence on Islamic medicine and medieval European medicine until many of their findings eventually became obsolete in the 14th century.
Hippocrates's writings not only had a great impact on the content of Greek medical thought, but also on the ethics of medical practice. But Hippocrates was definitely a man of his time. He is considered the source of the humor, elemental condition and imbalance theory of medicine, which he explained his book “ Affections” . He erroneously observed that tooth "pain derives from mucous insinuating itself under the roots of the teeth. Teeth are eroded and become decayed partly by mucous, and partly by food, when they are by nature weak and badly fixed in the mouth.”
Hippocratic Oath
Hippocratic Oath The Hippocratic oath begins: "I swear by Apollo the physician...and I take witness to the all the gods, and the goddesses, to keep according to my ability and my judgement the following oath: To consider dear to me as my parents him who taught this art; to live in common with him and if necessary to share my goods with him; to look up his children as my own brothers, to teach them this art if they so desire without fee or written promise...I will prescribe regimen for the good of my patients according to my ability and my judgment and never do harm to anyone...I will preserve the purity of my life and my art...In every home I will enter only for the good of my patients."
The entire “Hippocratic Oath” reads: “I swear by Apollo the physician, and Aesculapius, and Health, and All-heal, and all the gods and goddesses, that, according to my ability and judgment, I will keep this Oath and this stipulation to reckon him who taught me this Art equally dear to me as my parents, to share my substance with him, and relieve his necessities if required; to look upon his offspring in the same footing as my own brothers, and to teach them this art, if they shall wish to learn it, without fee or stipulation; and that by precept, lecture, and every other mode of instruction, I will impart a knowledge of the Art to my own sons, and those of my teachers, and to disciples bound by a stipulation and oath according to the law of medicine, but to none others. [Source: Hippocrates, Works trans., Francis Adams (New York; Loeb) vol. I, 299-301]
“I will follow that system of regimen which, according to my ability and judgment, I consider for the benefit of my patients, and abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous. I will give no deadly medicine to any one if asked, nor suggest any such counsel; and in like manner I will not give to a woman a pessary to produce abortion. With purity and with holiness I will pass my life and practice my Art. I will not cut persons laboring under the stone, but will leave this to be done by men who are practitioners of this work.
“Into whatever houses I enter, I will go into them for the benefit of the sick, and will abstain from every voluntary act of mischief and corruption; and, further from the seduction of females or males, of freemen and slaves. Whatever, in connection with my professional practice or not, in connection with it, I see or hear, in the life of men, which ought not to be spoken of abroad, I will not divulge, as reckoning that all such should be kept secret. While I continue to keep this Oath unviolated, may it be granted to me to enjoy life and the practice of the art, respected by all men, in all times! But should I trespass and violate this Oath, may the reverse be my lot!
Hippocrates: on the Sacred Disease
Hippocrates wrote in “On the Sacred Disease” (400 B.C.): “It is thus with regard to the disease called Sacred: it appears to me to be nowise more divine nor more sacred than other diseases, but has a natural cause like other affections. Men regard its nature and cause as divine from ignorance and wonder, because it is not at all like to other diseases. And this notion of its divinity is kept up by their inability to comprehend it, and the simplicity of the mode by which it is cured, for men are freed from it by purifications and incantations. But if it is reckoned divine because it is wonderful, instead of one there are many diseases which would be sacred; for, as I will show, there are others no less wonderful and prodigious, which nobody imagines to be sacred. The quotidian, tertian, and quartan fevers, seem to me no less sacred and divine in their origin than this disease, although they are not reckoned so wonderful. And I see men become mad and demented from no manifest cause, and at the same time doing many things out of place; and I have known many persons in sleep groaning and crying out, some in a state of suffocation, some jumping up and fleeing out of doors, and deprived of their reason until they awaken, and afterward becoming well and rational as before, although they be pale and weak; and this will happen not once but frequently. And there are many and various things of the like kind, which it would be tedious to state particularly. [Source: Hippocrates, On The Sacred Disease, translated By Francis Adams]
“They who first referred this malady to the gods appear to me to have been just such persons as the conjurors, purificators, crackpots, and charlatans now are, who give themselves out for being excessively religious, and as knowing more than other people. Such persons, then, using the divinity as a pretext and screen of their own inability to of their own inability to afford any assistance, have given out that the disease is sacred, adding suitable reasons for this opinion, they have instituted a mode of treatment which is safe for themselves, namely, by applying purifications and incantations, and enforcing abstinence from baths and many articles of food which are unwholesome to men in diseases. Of sea substances, the surmullet, the blacktail, the mullet, and the eel; for these are the fishes most to be guarded against. And of fleshes, those of the goat, the stag, the sow, and the dog: for these are the kinds of flesh which are aptest to disorder the bowels. Of fowls, the cock, the turtle, and the bustard, and such others as are reckoned to be particularly strong. And of potherbs, mint, garlic, and onions; for what is acrid does not agree with a weak person. And they forbid to have a black robe, because black is expressive of death; and to sleep on a goat's skin, or to wear it, and to put one foot upon another, or one hand upon another; for all these things are held to be hindrances to the cure. All these they enjoin with reference to its divinity, as if possessed of more knowledge, and announcing beforehand other causes so that if the person should recover, theirs would be the honor and credit; and if he should die, they would have a certain defense, as if the gods, and not they, were to blame, seeing they had administered nothing either to eat or drink as medicines, nor had overheated him with baths, so as to prove the cause of what had happened.
“But I am of opinion that (if this were true) none of the Libyans, who live in the interior, would be free from this disease, since they all sleep on goats' skins, and live upon goats' flesh; neither have they couch, robe, nor shoe that is not made of goat's skin, for they have no other herds but goats and oxen. But if these things, when administered in food, aggravate the disease, and if it be cured by abstinence from them, godhead is not the cause at all; nor will purifications be of any avail, but it is the food which is beneficial and prejudicial, and the influence of the divinity vanishes. Thus, they who try to cure these maladies in this way, appear to me neither to reckon them sacred nor divine. For when they are removed by such purifications, and this method of cure, what is to prevent them from being brought upon men and induced by other devices similar to these? So that the cause is no longer divine, but human. For whoever is able, by purifications conjurations, to drive away such an affection, will be able, by other practices, to excite it; and, according to this view, its divine nature is entirely done away with.
“By such sayings and doings, they profess to be possessed of superior knowledge, and deceive mankind by enjoining lustrations and purifications upon them, while their discourse turns upon the divinity and the godhead. And yet it would appear to me that their discourse savors not of piety, as they suppose, but rather of impiety, and as if there were no gods, and that what they hold to be holy and divine, were impious and unholy.”
Hippocrates Aphorisms
Hippocrates reportedly said: “Sec. I. 1. Life is short, art is long, occasion sudden, experiment dangerous, judgment difficult. Neither is it sufficient that the physician do his office, unless the patient and his attendants do their duty and external conditions are well ordered. [Source: Oliver J. Thatcher, ed., “The Library of Original Sources” (Milwaukee: University Research Extension Co., 1907), Vol. III: The Roman World, pp. 286-292]
“6. In extreme diseases extreme and searching remedies are best. 13. Old men easily endure fasting, middle-aged men not so well, young men still less easily, and children worst of all, especially those who are of a more lively spirit. 14. Those bodies that grow have much natural heat, therefore they require good store of food or else the body consumes, but old men have little heat in them, therefore they require but little food, for muchnourishment extinguishes that heat. And this is the reason that old men do not have very acute fevers, because their bodies are cold. 20. Those things that are or have been justly determined by nature ought not to be moved or altered, either by purging or other irritating medicine, but should be let alone.
“Sec. II. 3. Sleeping or walking, if either be immoderate, is evil. 4. Neither satiety nor hunger nor any other thing which exceeds the natural bounds can be good or healthful. 24. The fourth day is the index of the seventh, the eighth of the beginning of the week following. But the eleventh day is to be considered, for it is the fourth day of another seventh. And again the seventeenth day is to be considered, being the fourth from the fourteenth and the seventh from the eleventh. 51. It is dangerous much and suddenly either to empty, heat, fill, or cool, or by any other means to stir the body, for whatever is beyond moderation is an enemy to nature; but that is safe which is done little by little, and especially when a change is to be made from one thing to another.
“Sec. III. 1. Changes of seasons are most effectual causes of diseases, and so are alterations of cold and heat within the seasons, and other things proportionately in the same manner. Sec IV. 37. Cold sweats in acute fevers signify death, but in more mild diseases they mean the continuance of the fever. 38. In what part of the body the sweat is there is the disease. 39. And in what part of the body there is unusual heat or cold there the disease is seated. Sec. VII. 65. The same meat administered to a person sick of a fever as to one in health will strengthen the healthy one, but will increase the malady of the sick one.
“Sec. VIII. 6. Where medicines will not cure incision must be made; if incisions fail, we must resort to cauterizing; but if that will not do we may judge the malady incurable. 18. The finishing stroke of death is when the vital heat ascends above the diaphragm and all the moisture is dried up. But when the lungs and heart have lost their moisture, the heat being all collected together in the most mortal places, the vital fire by which the whole structure was built up and held together is suddenly exhaled. Then the soul leaving this earthly building makes its exit partly through the flesh and partly through the openings in the head, by which we live; and thus it surrenders up this cold earthly statue, together with the heat, blood, tissues, and flesh.
Galen
Galen Galen (A.D. 130-200), a physician from Pergamum in Asia Minor, is considered the father of medicine. For 1,400 years, doctors in ancient Rome, Medieval Europe and the great Islamic empires based their treatment on literature written by Galen, who saw the inside of a body only a few times and the closest he had ever come to examining a cadaver (a practice considered taboo in Greek and Roman times) was looking at a skeleton picked clean by vultures on the side of a road. His anatomy texts were based primarily on the dissections of pigs and monkeys. [Source: "The Discoverers" by Daniel Boorstin,∞]
Galen began studying medicine at the age of fifteen and continued his studies until he was 28 with professors of medicine in Smyrna, Corinth and Alexandria. His first job as a doctor was patching up maimed and wounded gladiators in Pergamum, and he probably learned more practical information from this job than he did doing anything else. Later he treated the rich in Rome and became the court physician of philosopher-emperor Marcus Aurelius.∞
Galen was one of the most prolific writers of antiquity. He produced five hundred treatises in Greek — on anatomy, physiology, rhetoric, grammar, drama and philosophy. More than a hundred of these works survive, including a treatise indexing his own writings.∞
Galen once conceded if "he had not called on the mighty in the morning and dined with them in the evening" he probably wouldn't have had much success. Despite his notoriety and wealth he despised material possessions and once said all he really needed in life was two garments, two slaves, and two sets of utensils.
Galen’s Theory of Medicine and Observations
Galen believed that air was transformed into “pneuma” by the lungs and bile was changed into blood in the liver. As the “ pneuma” and blood moved through the body they evolved into higher forms. When the blood left the liver, for example, it carried "natural spirit." When the natural spirit entered the left ventricle of the heart it became "vital spirit," which in turn became "animal spirit" when it passed through the brain. [Source: "The Discoverers" by Daniel Boorstin,∞]
Galen pig vivisection Each soul, according to Galen, possessed “faculties” corresponding to their "pneuma-producing power." The heart, liver and veins possessed a blood-making faculty, and the stomach had a digestive faculty. Like Hippocrates and Aristotle, Galen believed the driving force behind the entire body was “ innate heat” , which distinguished the living from the dead. The source of most of the heat was the heart, thought to be the hottest organ in the body.∞
Among Galen's observations were that arteries carried blood, not air, and that blood didn't flow, it sloshed back and forth within the circulatory system. The Greeks and Romans believed that three "souls," or “pneuma” , governed the body: the rational in the brain ruled sensation and motion; the irascible in the heart controlled the passions; and concupiscible in the liver produced nutrition.
In his book “ On the Usefulness of the Parts of the Body” Galen noted that men were more advanced than animals "not because he has hands or that he is the most intelligent...but because he is the most intelligent and has hands." Galen, Hippocrates and other believed in physiognomy, the practice of defining a person's character or illness though reading his or her face. ∞
Galen false presumptions endured for centuries. The views purported by Galen were so widely followed that when descriptions in his book did not match up with observations, it was believed that human body had changed since the book was written, not that Galen's work was flawed.
Galen coined the word “gonorrhea” (meaning "a flow of seed"). He also tied off an artery of a living animal in a famous experiment to prove that blood vessels contained blood not "spirit."
Galen on Medicine
Galen wrote in the Second Century B.C.: “There are in all three branches of the study of medicine, in this order. The first is the study of the result by analysis; the second is the combining of the facts found by analysis; the third is the determining of the definition, which branch we are now to consider in this work. This branch of the science may be called not only the determining of the definition, but just as well the explication, as some would term it, or the resolution, as some desire, or the explanation, or according to still others, the exposition. Now some of the Herophilii, such as Heraclides of Erythrea, have attempted to teach this doctrine. These Herophilii and certain followers of Erasistratus and of Athenaeus, the Attalian, studied also the doctrine of combination. But no one before us has described the method which begins with the study of the results, from which every art must take its beginning methodically; this we have considered in a former work. [Source: Oliver J. Thatcher, ed., “The Library of Original Sources” (Milwaukee: University Research Extension Co., 1907), Vol. III: The Roman World, pp. 286-292]
“Chap. I. Medicine is the science of the healthy, the unhealthy, and the indeterminate, or neutral. It is a matter of indifference whether one calls the second the ill, or the unhealthy. It is better to give the name of the science in common than in technical terms. But the healthy, the unhealthy, the neutral, are each of them subject to a three-fold-division: first, as to the body; second, as to the cause; and third, as to the sign. The body which contains the health, the cause which affects or preserves the health, and the sign or symptom which marks the condition of the health, all these are called by the Greeks hygienia. In the same way they speak of the bodies susceptible to disease, of causes effecting and aiding diseases, and of signs indicating diseases, as pathological. Likewise they speak of neutral bodies, causes, and signs. And according to the first division the science of medicine is called the science of the causes of health, according to the second, of the causes of ill-health, and according to the third of the causes of neutral conditions.
“Chap. 2. The healthy body is simply that which is rightly composed from its very birth in the simple and elementary parts of its structure, and is symmetrical in the organs composed of these elements. From another point of view, that is also a healthy body which is in sound condition at the time of speaking.”
Asclepius, the Healing God
Asclepius was the Greek healing god. Marianne Bonz wrote for PBS’s Frontline: “The son of Apollo by a mortal woman, Asclepius was taken by his divine father at birth and apprenticed to a wise centaur (a mythical creature, half man and half horse). This centaur, whose name was Chiron, taught Asclepius the healing arts so that he could reduce the sufferings of mortals. With his miraculous cures, Asclepius quickly earned great fame. Motivated by compassion, he even succeeded in restoring the dead to life. But this proved his undoing. Hades complained to Zeus that if this were allowed to continue, the natural order of the universe would be subverted. Zeus agreed and struck Asclepius down with a thunderbolt. In some versions of the story, Asclepius was transformed into a star after his death. [Source: Marianne Bonz, Frontline, PBS, April 1998. Bonz was managing editor of Harvard Theological Review. She received a doctorate from Harvard Divinity School, with a dissertation on Luke-Acts as a literary challenge to the propaganda of imperial Rome. ]
“Asclepius was an immensely popular god, originally in Greece but later also in Rome. By the fourth century before the common era, he had established a number of sanctuaries in Greece, the most important ones being in Cos and Epidauros. Early in the third century B.C., his cult was brought to Rome after the city had been struck by a plague. Asclepius's medical knowledge and divine healing powers fostered two distinct traditions within the Greek world. On the one hand, he served as a divine mentor to the doctors who treated patients at his sanctuary at Cos. On the other hand, at the sanctuary of Epidauros, the god performed miraculous cures in response to the direct petitions of suppliants.
“In the early Roman imperial era, Asclepius assumed an even greater religious importance. He had become a savior god. The physically or emotionally afflicted received long-term care and guidance at his sanctuaries, and in return they devoted themselves to his worship and service.
“The most famous of devotee of Asclepius during the Roman imperial period was the rhetor and sophist (professional public speaker) Aelius Aristides. Having just embarked on his public career, Aristides was stricken by a complete physical and mental breakdown. After seeking the help of another god to no avail, he visited the shrine of Asclepius in his adoptive city of Smyrna.
“During this visit, the god appeared to Aristides in a dream-vision, and this encounter changed his life. Asclepius not only prescribed treatments for his chronic bouts of illness, the god also offered guidance for the conduct of all aspects of his life. Thereafter, Aristides placed himself and his career under the god's protection, making numerous extended visits to the renowned Asclepius sanctuary in Pergamon. In his autobiographical narrative of his numerous encounters with the god, Aristides reveals his special relationship with Asclepius by most often addressing the god as "Savior."
See Separate Article: See Healing Temples Under HEALTH CARE IN ANCIENT GREECE europe.factsanddetails.com
Asclepius: A Model for Jesus?
L. Michael White of the University of Texas at Austin told PBS: “When Christians talked about salvation we have to understand how a pagan would have heard that term. Salvation actually is a term of healing. It's medical, and it apparently was understood to mean deliverance from disease and death. Healing, magic, medical cures are part of the Jesus tradition going way back to ... the early gospel sources, and it continues to be a very important part of Christian tradition. One of the most prominent scenes in all the catacombs is of Jesus as healer. Jesus as magician. This is really something very important within the Roman culture, and apparently health and disease were very important issues all around. It's often suggested that the mortality rate among members of Roman cities might have been as high as fifty percent of all children born died within the first five years of life. So death and disease were all around.... [Source: L. Michael White, Professor of Classics and Director of the Religious Studies Program University of Texas at Austin, Frontline, PBS, April 1998 ]
“One of the most popular deities of all is Asclepius, the healing God, and it's often suggested that Jesus is kind of modeled after a new or a younger Asclepius. Asclepius is often portrayed in some ways similar to Zeus as this great, old bearded god and he also has his wife or consort. Her name is Hygeia. Her name means health in Greek, and so the worship of Asclepius the healer and of health personified as his wife are very prominent cults. Indeed, the equivalent of hospitals for ancient society was really the temple of Asclepius, and we see these in a number of places around the Greek and Roman world. ...[T]he Asclepius cult, very much like Christianity and some of the other new religions of the Greco-Roman world, was a portable cult. You could have temples of Asclepius almost anywhere. Anywhere you're willing to have one built and pay for it.
“[W]hat happened in a temple of Asclepius was that one went there to take the cures. It was kind of like a spa. You could go and sleep in the temple. They call that incubating in the temple, and bathe in their ritual baths and offer incense and prayers and buy sacrifices from the cult priests. In order to try to get the god to perform a healing, and it's interesting that we have a mixture of real medicine. That is, real scientific medical practice going on side-by-side with these religious magical kinds of healing practices. So the ancients really thought of the two things going very much hand in hand and everyone knew about Asclepius. He was one of the most important gods around. After all, who else could give you health?”
Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons, The Louvre, The British Museum
Text Sources: Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Greece sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Hellenistic World sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; BBC Ancient Greeks bbc.co.uk/history/; Canadian Museum of History, Perseus Project - Tufts University; perseus.tufts.edu ; MIT Classics Online classics.mit.edu ; Gutenberg.org, Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, Live Science, Discover magazine, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker, Encyclopædia Britannica, Wikipedia, Reuters, Associated Press, The Guardian, AFP and various books and other publications.
Last updated September 2024