Free to follow every thread. No paywall, no dead ends.
Hippocrates: the story on HearLore | HearLore
Hippocrates
Hippocrates was born around the year 460 BC on the Greek island of Kos, yet the true identity of the man remains obscured by centuries of legend and conflation. While history remembers him as the Father of Medicine, very little is known concretely about what he himself thought, wrote, or did. His achievements were often merged with those of the practitioners of Hippocratic medicine and the writers of the Hippocratic Corpus, creating a figure who is simultaneously a real historical person and a collective symbol of medical wisdom. The first biographer to attempt to separate fact from fiction was Soranus of Ephesus, a 2nd-century Greek physician, whose accounts form the basis of most personal information we possess today. Later biographies from the 10th and 12th centuries, such as those found in the Suda and the works of John Tzetzes, added layers of myth that are difficult to peel away from the historical reality. Even his contemporaries, Plato and Aristotle, mentioned him only in passing, describing him as Hippocrates of Kos, the Asclepiad, and noting his belief that a complete knowledge of the body was necessary for medicine. The man who died at the age of 83, 85, or perhaps 90 in Larissa, likely never wrote the famous oath that bears his name, yet his legacy as a kind, dignified, old country doctor has endured for over two millennia.
Separating Science From Superstition
Hippocratic medicine was humble and passive, based on the doctrine that the body contains within itself the power to re-balance the four humours and heal itself. Hippocrates believed that rest and immobilization were of capital importance, and his therapeutic approach focused on simply easing this natural process. To this end, Hippocrates believed that only clean water or wine were ever used on wounds, though dry treatment was preferable, and soothing balms were sometimes employed. He was reluctant to administer drugs or engage in specialized treatment that might prove to be wrongly chosen, preferring generalized therapy that followed a generalized diagnosis. Some of the generalized treatments he prescribed included fasting and the consumption of a mix of honey and vinegar. He once stated that to eat when you are sick is to feed your sickness, and he may have been the originator of the idea to feed a cold but starve a fever. One of the strengths of Hippocratic medicine was its emphasis on prognosis, as medicinal therapy was quite immature at the time. The best thing that physicians could do was to evaluate an illness and predict its likely progression based upon data collected in detailed case histories. This passive approach was very successful in treating relatively simple ailments such as broken bones, which required traction to stretch the
The Healing Power Of Nature
Common questions
When and where was Hippocrates born?
Hippocrates was born around the year 460 BC on the Greek island of Kos. The exact date remains obscured by centuries of legend and conflation surrounding his life.
What is the death date of Hippocrates and where did he die?
Hippocrates died at the age of 83, 85, or perhaps 90 in Larissa. The specific year of his death is not recorded in the script text.
Did Hippocrates write the Hippocratic Oath?
Hippocrates likely never wrote the famous oath that bears his name. New information shows the document may have been written after his death, though it was attributed to him in antiquity.
What medical conditions did Hippocrates describe for the first time?
Hippocrates was the first to describe clubbing of the fingers, lung cancer, cyanotic heart disease, and the Hippocratic face. He also categorized illnesses as acute, chronic, endemic, and epidemic using specific medical terminology.
Who was the first biographer to separate fact from fiction about Hippocrates?
Soranus of Ephesus was the first biographer to attempt to separate fact from fiction about Hippocrates. He was a 2nd-century Greek physician whose accounts form the basis of most personal information we possess today.
What is the Hippocratic Museum and where is it located?
The Hippocratic Museum is located on the Greek island of Kos. It serves as a legacy site that continues the memory of Hippocrates alongside the Hippocrates Project of the New York University Medical Center and the Canadian and American Hippocratic Registries.
skeletal system and relieve pressure on the injured area using devices like the Hippocratic bench.
Hippocrates and his followers were the first to describe many diseases and medical conditions, including the clubbing of the fingers, an important diagnostic sign in chronic lung disease, lung cancer, and cyanotic heart disease, which is sometimes referred to as Hippocratic fingers. He was also the first physician to describe Hippocratic face in Prognosis, a change produced in the countenance by death, long sickness, excessive evacuations, or excessive hunger, a description famously alluded to by Shakespeare when writing of Falstaff's death. Hippocrates began to categorize illnesses as acute, chronic, endemic, and epidemic, using terms such as exacerbation, relapse, resolution, crisis, paroxysm, peak, and convalescence. He was the first documented chest surgeon, and his findings and techniques, such as the use of lead pipes to drain chest wall abscess, remain valid to present-day students of pulmonary medicine and surgery. In neurology, he analyzed conditions such as hemiplegia, paraplegia, apoplexy, and epilepsy, contributing to the diminishing of its origin as a divine and rather a common brain disorder. He laid the foundation of surgery with his studies, describing differing surgical techniques of general surgery, urology, orthopedics, and neurosurgery, and used antiseptic techniques such as cleaning the surgical field with boiled water, salt, seawater, and natural perfumes.
The Hippocratic Corpus is a collection of around seventy early medical works collected in Alexandrian
The Art Of Clinical Observation
Greece, written in Ionic Greek, and the question of whether Hippocrates himself was the author of any of the treatises in the corpus has not been conclusively answered. Modern debate revolves around only a few of the treatises seen as potentially authored by him, and because of the variety of subjects, writing styles, and apparent date of construction, the Hippocratic Corpus could not have been written by one person. The volumes were probably produced by his students and followers, and the corpus came to be known by his name because of his fame, possibly all medical works were classified under Hippocrates by a librarian in Alexandria. Among the treatises of the Corpus are The Hippocratic Oath, The Book of Prognostics, On Regimen in Acute Diseases, Aphorisms, On Airs, Waters and Places, and Instruments of Reduction. The Hippocratic Oath, a seminal document on the ethics of medical practice, was attributed to Hippocrates in antiquity, although new information shows it may have been written after his death. While the Oath is rarely used in its original form today, it serves as a foundation for other, similar oaths and laws that define good medical practice and morals, and such derivatives are regularly taken by modern medical
The First Surgeon And The First Neurologist
graduates about to enter medical practice.
Although Hippocrates neither founded the school of medicine named after him nor wrote most of the treatises attributed to him, he is traditionally regarded as the Father of Medicine. He managed to confer an exceptionally lustrous reputation upon the Koan school through his teaching, and his contributions revolutionized the practice of medicine, even though the advancement stalled after his death. So revered was Hippocrates that his teachings were largely taken as too great to be improved upon, and no significant advancements of his methods were made for a long time. The centuries after Hippocrates's death were marked as much by retrograde movement as by further advancement, with the practice of taking clinical case-histories dying out according to Fielding Garrison. After Hippocrates, another significant physician was Galen, a Greek who lived from AD 129 to AD 200, who perpetuated the tradition of Hippocratic medicine, making some advancements but also some regressions. In the Middle Ages, the Islamic world adopted Hippocratic methods and developed new medical technologies, and after the European Renaissance, Hippocratic methods were revived in western Europe and even further expanded in the 19th century. Notable among those who employed Hippocrates's rigorous clinical techniques were Thomas Sydenham, William
The Corpus And The Oath
Heberden, Jean-Martin Charcot, and William Osler, whose work makes up the whole history of internal medicine.
According to Aristotle's testimony, Hippocrates was known as The Great Hippocrates, and concerning his disposition, he was first portrayed as a kind, dignified, old country doctor and later as stern and forbidding. He is certainly considered wise, of very great intellect, and especially as very practical, with Francis Adams describing him as strictly the physician of experience and common sense. His image as the wise, old doctor is reinforced by busts of him, which wear large beards on a wrinkled face, and many physicians of the time wore their hair in the style of Jove and Asklepius. Accordingly, the busts of Hippocrates that have been found could be only altered versions of portraits of these deities. Hippocrates and the beliefs that he embodied are considered medical ideals, and Fielding Garrison, an authority on medical history, stated that he is, above all, the exemplar of that flexible, critical, well-poised attitude of mind, ever on the lookout for sources of error, which is the very essence of the scientific spirit. His figure stands for all time as that of the ideal physician, inspiring the medical profession since his death, and his legacy continues today through the Hippocratic Museum on the Greek island of Kos, the Hippocrates Project of the New
The Great Hippocrates Legacy
York University Medical Center, and the Canadian and American Hippocratic Registries, organizations of physicians who uphold the principles of the original Hippocratic Oath as inviolable through changing social times.