Hippocrates (460 BC - 377BC)

Born on the island of Cos, Greece in 460 BC, Hippocrates was born into a family of physicians as his father(Heraklides) and his grandfather(Hippocrates) were both physicians. When his parents died, Hippocrates moved to Athens, where he was apprenticed to Gorgian of Leontine. He then became a merchant, and according to Aristotle, a bad one due to his being cheated by the officials of Byzantium. This was due to his being too naïve and trusting. From there he went from place to place, apprenticing students on medical science in Greece and Macedonia. He lived in Greece during the Golden Century where experimentation thrived and scientific facts were proven for the first time. Though he is very famous, because he lived long ago, very little is known about the details of Hippocrates' life.

Hippocrates used his intellect to the fullest, being a very capable mathematician, and also an extremely talented physician. In geometry, he is thought to be the first person to figure out how to square the circle, and figure many other basics of geometry while it

is also what he was thought to have taught. Hippocrates main gift was thought to have been as a physician. He was thought to be the first person who preached that medicine has scientific explanations, and has nothing to do with gods and spirits. Unlike people who accepted this, he researched his hypotheses, basing most of them on his study of the human body. He was the first person who actually diagnosed diseases(pneumonia and epilepsy), and believed in simple treatments like sleep, good hygiene, and a healthy diet. He also proved that thoughts and feelings, came from the brain, and not the heart. It should be noted that all of his research and hard work did not go to waste, as he taught all these concepts at his medical school he formed at Cos. Hippocrates was known as the father of medicine, and a brilliant geometrist and mathematician. His name is well known throughout the world, by anyone who has anything to do with a physician's practice. Although not as famous, Hippocrates did for physicians what Galileo did for astronomers. As Hippocrates said himself in one of his aphorisms, "Life is short, and the Art long; the occasion fleeting; experience fallacious, and judgement difficult."

In common with other intellectuals in the Greek city-states, Hippocratics are interested in ethnography and far-away places and peoples, in epidemic diseases and plagues, in the origins of man and embryology, and in valetudinarian dietetics. Like their contemporaries Euripides and Aristophanes, Hippocratics are quick to pounce upon causes and remedies that they consider irrational, and they too express their scorn for earlier ways of thinking. The writer of Sacred Disease criticizes "witch-doctors, faith-healers, quacks and charlatans," whose etiology for epilepsy and sudden seizures invokes attacks from the gods and whose therapies consist of purifications, incantations, prohibition of baths, lying on goat-skins and eating goats' flesh (Sacred Disease 1-2). The writer of Diseases of Young Girls censures women who follow commands from Artemis' priests to dedicate costly garments to the goddess in the effort to cure madness in the premenarchic young girl.

Both medical writers ground their etiology for the diseases in blockage of inner vessels by a bodily humor; both consider sitting still and having your feet go to sleep an appropriate analogy for the numbness that extinguishes the senses in the diseases. Both base treatment on the evacuation of the noxious fluid from vital areas of the body: the epileptic is to take a phlemagogue to move excess phlegm gradually from his head so that its sudden descent into his body doesn't overwhelm his senses, and the young girl is to sleep with a man as soon as possible to remove the impediment at the

mouth of her uterus, while pregnancy will bring her long-lasting cure by opening up her body so that her excess fluids can move about freely.

VI. The Hippocratics and "Rationalized" Medicine

Hippocratics find it important to absorb all human diseases within their medical technê, including the very difficult sicknesses of sudden seizures and premenarchic madness, and to this end they not only assign mechanical causes that interact with the anatomy and physiology they endorse, but they also employ therapies that reverse a diseased condition in accordance with the same mechanical principles. "Opposites cure opposites" is a deliberate intellectual stance in opposition to the "like cures like" of sympathetic magic. Hippocratics know how to speak the language of science,

and they are certainly the first in the Western tradition to write medical science in a form that has survived to our time. They formulate questions that the West has continued to ask: What makes this person sick? Do women get sick in the same way as men? We can object that neither a descent of phlegm from the head as an etiology for epilepsy, nor a fantasy membrane at the mouth of the uterus in the young girl, is an empirically visible phenomenon; and we can dismiss the medical content of their science. We cling, however, to some of their deontology and medical ethics, as summarized in the Hippocratic Oath.

What is important here is that these medical writers are asking not "Who causes this sickness?" but rather, "By what process does this sickness occur?" However imaginative their mechanistic explanations may be, Hippocratics can defend them with arguments that appeal to process, not to a capricious or malevolent deity, and they can explain the therapies they prescribe in terms of the actions that their medicaments set in motion.

On Ancient Medicine

By Hippocrates

Written 400 B.C.E

Translated by Francis Adams

Part 1 (of 24)

Whoever having undertaken to speak or write on Medicine, have first laid down for themselves some hypothesis to their argument, such as hot, or cold, or moist, or dry, or whatever else they choose (thus reducing their subject within a narrow compass, and supposing only one or two original causes of diseases or of death among mankind), are all clearly mistaken in much that they say; and this is the more reprehensible as relating to an art which all men avail themselves of on the most important occasions, and the good operators and practitioners in which they hold in especial honor. For there are practitioners, some bad and some far otherwise, which, if there had been no such thing as Medicine, and if nothing had been investigated or found out in it, would not have been the case, but all would have been equally unskilled and ignorant of it, and everything concerning the sick would have been directed by chance. But now it is not so; for, as in all the other arts, those who practise them differ much from one another in dexterity and knowledge, so is it in like manner with Medicine. Wherefore I have not thought that it stood in need of an empty hypothesis, like those subjects which are occult and dubious, in attempting to handle which it is necessary to use some hypothesis; as, for example, with regard to things above us and things below the earth; if any one should treat of these and undertake to declare how they are constituted, the reader or hearer could not find out, whether what is delivered be true or false; for there is nothing which can be referred to in order to discover the truth.

Part 2

But all these requisites belong of old to Medicine, and an origin and way have been found out, by which many and elegant discoveries have been made, during a length of time, and others will yet be found out, if a person possessed of the proper ability, and knowing those discoveries which have been made, should proceed from them to prosecute his investigations. But whoever, rejecting and despising all these, attempts to pursue another course and form of inquiry, and says he has discovered anything, is deceived himself and deceives others, for the thing is impossible. And for what reason it is impossible, I will now endeavor to explain, by stating and showing what the art really is. From this it will be manifest that discoveries cannot possibly be made in any other way. And most especially, it appears to me, that whoever treats of this art should treat of things which are familiar to the common people. For of nothing else will such a one have to inquire or treat, but of the diseases under which the common people have labored, which diseases and the causes of their origin and departure, their increase and decline, illiterate persons cannot easily find out themselves, but still it is easy for them to understand these things when discovered and expounded by others. For it is nothing more than that every one is put in mind of what had occurred to himself. But whoever does not reach the capacity of the illiterate vulgar and fails to make the listen to him, misses his mark. Wherefore, then, there is no necessity for any hypothesis.

Part 3

For the art of Medicine would not have been invented at first, nor would it have been made a subject of investigation (for there would have been no need of it), if when men are indisposed, the same food and other articles of regimen which they eat and drink when in good health were proper for them, and if no others were preferable to these. But now necessity itself made medicine to be sought out and discovered by men, since the same things when administered to the sick, which agreed with them when in good health, neither did nor do agree with them. But to go still further back, I hold that the diet and food which people in health now use would not have been discovered, provided it had suited with man to eat and drink in like manner as the ox, the horse, and all other animals, except man, do of the productions of the earth, such as fruits, weeds, and grass; for from such things these animals grow, live free of disease, and require no other kind of food. And, at first, I am of opinion that man used the same sort of food, and that the present articles of diet had been discovered and invented only after a long lapse of time, for when they suffered much and severely from strong and brutish diet, swallowing things which were raw, unmixed, and possessing great strength, they became exposed to strong pains and diseases, and to early deaths. It is likely, indeed, that from habit they would suffer less from these things then than we would now, but still they would suffer severely even then; and it is likely that the greater number, and those who had weaker constitutions, would all perish; whereas the stronger would hold out for a longer time, as even nowadays some, in consequence of using strong articles of food, get off with little trouble, but others with much pain and suffering. From this necessity it appears to me that they would search out the food befitting their nature, and thus discover that which we now use: and that from wheat, by macerating it, stripping it of its hull, grinding it all down, sifting, toasting, and baking it, they formed bread; and from barley they formed cake (maza), performing many operations in regard to it; they boiled, they roasted, they mixed, they diluted those things which are strong and of intense qualities with weaker things, fashioning them to the nature and powers of man, and considering that the stronger things Nature would not be able to manage if administered, and that from such things pains, diseases, and death would arise, but such as Nature could manage, that from them food, growth, and health, would arise. To such a discovery and investigation what more suitable name could one give than that of Medicine? since it was discovered for the health of man, for his nourishment and safety, as a substitute for that kind of diet by which pains, diseases, and deaths were occasioned.

Part Four

And if this is not held to be an art, I do not object. For it is not suitable to call any one an artist of that which no one is ignorant of, but which all know from usage and necessity. But still the discovery is a great one, and requiring much art and investigation. Wherefore those who devote themselves to gymnastics and training, are always making some new discovery, by pursuing the same line of inquiry, where, by eating and drinking certain things, they are improved and grow stronger than they were.

Part 5

Let us inquire then regarding what is admitted to be Medicine; namely, that which was invented for the sake of the sick, which possesses a name and practitioners, whether it also seeks to accomplish the same objects, and whence it derived its origin. To me, then, it appears, as I said at the commencement, that nobody would have sought for medicine at all, provided the same kinds of diet had suited with men in sickness as in good health. Wherefore, even yet, such races of men as make no use of medicine, namely, barbarians, and even certain of the Greeks, live in the same way when sick as when in health; that is to say, they take what suits their appetite, and neither abstain from, nor restrict themselves in anything for which they have a desire. But those who have cultivated and invented medicine, having the same object in view as those of whom I formerly spoke, in the first place, I suppose, diminished the quantity of the articles of food which they used, and this alone would be sufficient for certain of the

sick, and be manifestly beneficial to them, although not to all, for there would be some so affected as not to be able to manage even small quantities of their usual food, and as such persons would seem to require something weaker, they invented soups, by mixing a few strong things with much water, and thus abstracting that which was strong in them by dilution and boiling. But such as could not manage even soups, laid them aside, and had recourse to drinks, and so regulated them as to mixture and quantity, that they were administered neither stronger nor weaker than what was required.

Part 6

But this ought to be well known, that soups do not agree with certain persons in their diseases, but, on the contrary, when administered both the fevers and the pains are exacerbated, and it becomes obvious that what was given has proved food and increase to the disease, but a wasting and weakness to the body. But whatever persons so affected partook of solid food, or cake, or bread, even in small quantity, would be ten times and more decidedly injured than those who had taken soups, for no other reason than from the strength of the food in reference to the affection; and to whomsoever it is proper to take soups and not eat solid food, such a one will be much more injured if he eat much than if he eat little, but even little food will be injurious to him. But all the causes of the sufferance refer themselves to this rule, that the strongest things most especially and decidedly hurt man, whether in health or in disease.

Part 7

What other object, then, had he in view who is called a physician, and is admitted to be a practitioner of the art, who found out the regimen and diet befitting the sick, than he who originally found out and prepared for all mankind that kind of food which we all now use, in place of the former savage and brutish mode of living? To me it appears that the mode is the same, and the discovery of a similar nature. The one sought to abstract those things which the constitution of man cannot digest, because of their wildness and intemperature, and the other those things which are beyond the powers of the affection in which any one may happen to be laid up. Now, how does the one differ from the other, except that the latter admits of greater variety, and requires more application, whereas the former was the commencement of the process?

Part 8

And if one would compare the diet of sick persons with that of persons in health, he will find it not more injurious than that of healthy persons in comparison with that of wild beasts and of other animals. For, suppose a man laboring under one of those diseases which are neither serious and unsupportable, nor yet altogether mild, but such as that, upon making any mistake in diet, it will become apparent, as if he should eat bread and flesh, or any other of those articles which prove beneficial to healthy persons, and that, too, not in great quantity, but much less than he could have taken when in good health; and that another man in good health, having a constitution neither very feeble, nor yet strong, eats of those things which are wholesome and strengthening to an ox or a horse, such as vetches, barley, and the like, and that, too, not in great quantity, but much less than he could take; the healthy person who did so would be subjected to no less disturbance and danger than the sick person who took bread or cake unseasonably. All these things are proofs that Medicine is to be prosecuted and discovered by the same method as the other.

http://www.norfacad.pvt.k12.va.us/project/hippocra/hippocra.htm

http://classics.mit.edu/Hippocrates/ancimed.html