Hippocrates Research Paper

Hippocrates was born on the Greek island of Kos around 460 BC, the classical Greece era. He was and still is known as “The Father of Western Medicine” as a rational science. But, what made him the father of western medicine? Before Hippocrates even started studying medicine, people believed that diseases were caused by superstition or punishment by the Gods. Hippocrates was the first person who separated the discipline of medicine from religion. He believed diseases were caused from environmental factors, diet, or living habits. He worked with many beliefs that were based on “incorrect” anatomy and physiology, now known as humorism. His beliefs were so out of the norm of what everyone else believed in Greece, that he greatly suffered from

But, this schools interpretation of medicine was far from what Hippocrates believed in. The Cnidian School saw the human body as a bunch of random isolated parts put together, so if we had a disease they thought of the disease to only be affecting that part only. Hippocrates disagreed with his school, and started using his own concept/ theory called The Four Humors, which says that health is a balance of the four humors, disease results from their disharmony and imbalance, and that it is the physician’s job to restore health by correcting the harmony to the humors. To quote Hippocrates, “The body of man has in itself blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile; these make up the nature of the body, and through these he feels pain or enjoys health. Now, he enjoys the most perfect health when these elements are duly proportioned to one another in respect to compounding, power and bulk, and when they are perfectly mingled. Pain is felt when one of these elements is in defect or excess, or is isolated in the body without being compounded with all the

They started to transform the art of medicine and put its theory and practice on a well stabilized path. Hippocrates anatomical knowledge was rather limited, but this is counterbalanced for by his different perspective and certainty of his reasoning for his theories. Hippocrates main focus for his theories was on strengthening and building up resistance for all kinds of diseases. He recommended exercise, diet, massages, and sea bathing. Hippocrates medicine was based on personal makeup, therefore it was quite flexible. He was more focused on treating the patient, not just the disease. With that said, Hippocrates was the first physician to classify diseases based on their similarities and from then he contrasted them. By doing so, Hippocrates placed their treatment and diagnosis on a more stabilized