The ancient Greek physician Hippocrates, whose biography is given below, left a noticeable mark in the history of medicine. Apparently, his fame was significant even during his lifetime, about 2.5 thousand years ago. However, there is practically no exact information about Hippocrates. The first biography of an ancient Greek healer was written several centuries after his death. It is also not known for certain which works of those that have come down to us were written by Hippocrates. However, its importance for the development of medicine is difficult to overestimate.
The doctor in the seventeenth knee
There is no exact information about the place where Hippocrates was born. A biography written by Soranus of Ephesus 600 years after the doctor's death points to the island of Kos. Presumably Hippocrates was born around 460 BC. e. Much of the information given by Soran clearly indicates that the author usedown fantasy. Today it is considered true that Hippocrates came from a family of doctors. He was a descendant in the seventeenth tribe of the great Asclepius. The father of the healer was Heraclid, whose family was descended from Hercules himself.
Often in the literature you can find the name "Hippocrates II". That was the name of the healer, since Hippocrates I was his grandfather, who together with his father taught the young man medicine. Leaving his home on Kos, he acquired much knowledge in Knida. Among the teachers of Hippocrates are Herodicus and the sophist Gorgias.
Traveling Doctor
Hippocrates did not sit still waiting for patients. He improved his knowledge and skills, moving from city to city. In the process of such wanderings, the glory of the great healer was formed. Some ancient Greek sources claim that Hippocrates left the island of Kos because he was accused of arson there. It is currently impossible to confirm this information. Indirect evidence of the doctor's wanderings is that the scene in the treatise "Epidemics" attributed to Hippocrates takes place outside his native island of Kos, on Thasos and in the city of Abder.
Estimated place and time of death
The ancient Greek physician Hippocrates, as indicated in most sources, lived a long life even by modern standards. Biographers disagree on the exact age at which he died. The numbers 83, 90 and 104 are called. Perhaps such a respectful age is evidence of the talent that Hippocrates was famous for. His biography most often ends with an indication,that the last years the healer spent in the city of Larris. He died there, presumably in the same year as Democritus (about 370 BC).
Hippocrates: contributions to biology and medicine
According to historical data, seven doctors named Hippocrates lived in ancient Greece at different times. Today it is almost impossible to determine which of the surviving works on medicine belongs to one or another of them. In those distant times, it was not customary to put a signature under scientific treatises. The most famous work on medicine in Antiquity is called the Hippocratic Corpus, however, it is not an article by one author, but a collection of works by several healers. It was compiled in the 3rd century. BC e. in Alexandria. The collection brought together 72 medical texts written in the Ionian dialect of Greek and dating back to the 5th-4th centuries. BC e.
Among this collection, only 4 works are now attributed to Hippocrates:
- "Aphorisms";
- "Epidemics";
- "Prognostics";
- "About the air, waters, places."
The first of them is the only one whose authorship with great certainty belongs to Hippocrates. "Aphorisms" is a collection of advice and observations, possibly taken from other works. Here you can find statements of a general philosophical nature and accurate medical reports.
"Prognosis" marked the beginning of diagnostics. The work presents the basics of ancient Greek therapy. Hippocrates, inbiology and medicine, who left a noticeable mark, was the first to describe the methods of examining the patient and monitoring him, the options for the development of various ailments, their characteristic signs and treatment.
Hippocrates gives a more detailed description of the diseases known at that time in Epidemics. Among the 42 ailments included in the treatise, there are venereal diseases, catarrhal and skin diseases, as well as various paralysis, consumption, and so on.
The Four Temperaments of Hippocrates
The treatise "About air, waters, places" for the first time in history describes the influence of the environment on he alth and the predisposition of some people to specific ailments. This work outlines the teachings of Hippocrates on the four bodily juices: bile, mucus, black bile and blood. The predominance of each of them causes certain disorders in the body, a predisposition to certain diseases. In the Middle Ages, on the basis of this theory, there was an idea of four temperaments:
- sanguine (blood predominates);
- phlegmatic (mucus);
- choleric (bile);
- melancholic (black bile).
This theory is often attributed to Hippocrates himself, which is not true. The healer divided people not according to their character traits, but according to their predisposition to diseases.
Hippocrates, whose biography is given in the article, laid the foundation for a scientific approach to treatment. His name is on a par with the great Greeks: Aristotle, Socrates, Democritus and Pericles.
