This picture of the ancient physician coincides with what we know about doctors from the Eighth to the Fifth Centuries B. Machaon's skill draws the admiring remark that:. A nascent theory of bodily humors, such as we see fully developed in the Corpus , operates in the epics: balance is a sign of health, imbalance, a harbinger of disease.
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 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.
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? Historical Context The Hippocratic Corpus consists of some 60 medical treatises, the majority of them conventionally dated to the later decades of the fifth century B. Formation of the Hippocratic Corpus The figure of a concerned and conscientious physician attracted not only a host of apocryphal legends about his great deeds, but also the heterogeneous collection of early medical writings known as the Hippocratic Corpus.
These documents were eventually gathered into a collection known as the Hippocratic Corpus. While Hippocratesmay not have written all of them himself, the papers are a reflection of his philosophies.
Through Hippocrates' example, medical practice pointed in a new direction, one that would move toward a more rational and scientific view of medicine. Hippocrates is often credited with developing the theory of the four humors, or fluids. Philosophers Aristotle and Galen also contributed to the concept.
Centuries later, William Shakespeare incorporated the humors into his writings when describing human qualities. Each humor was associated with a particular element earth, water, air or fire , two "qualities" cold, hot, moist, dry , certain body organs and certain ages childhood, adolescence, maturity, old age. The interactions among the humors, qualities, organs and ages — as well as the influence of the seasons and planets — determined a person's physical and mental health, as well as their disposition or personality.
Galen used the term "temperament" and literally meant that health and personality were affected by temperature — cold, hot, dry or wet. This notion is reflected in the idioms "catching a cold" or having a "dry sense of humor. Differences due to age, gender, emotions and disposition could be attributed to the interactions of the humors, according to the NIH exhibition.
Heat stimulated action; cold depressed it. Someone with a choleric disposition was courageous, but phlegm caused cowardice. Youth was hot and moist; age was cold and dry. According to the ancient theory, the key to good health was to keep the humors in balance; an excess or deficiency in one or more of the humors was associated with disease. Food was one of the most important ways to help balance the ratio of these humors.
In fact, one of Hippocrates' most famous quotes is, "Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food. Although these practices and the concept of the four humors may sound strange and unscientific today, these ideas represented the first step away from the predominantly supernatural view of sickness and a step toward a new idea that illness is related to the environment and what is going on inside the body. This is a collection of sixty medical books of which Hippocrates wrote just some.
We do not know who wrote most of them but they cover a time span of years so they could not have all been written by Hippocrates. Hippocrates and other Greek doctors believed that the work done by a doctor should be kept separate from the work done by a priest. They believed that observation of a patient was a vital aspect of medical care.
Ancient Greek doctors did examine their patients but Hippocrates wanted a more systematic period of observation and the recording of what was observed.
The Hippocratic Collection gave Greek doctors detailed advice on what to do with their patients:. By doing this they could make a natural history of an illness. Hippocrates and other doctors believed that by doing this they could forecast the development of the illness in future:.
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