Hippocrates

HIPPOCRATES. Hippocrates (460–377 B.C.E.), a disciple of Democritus, was a Greek physician who is now considered the father of Western medicine. Born on the Greek island of Cos, he was associated with the cult of Asclepius, the Greek god of healing whose staff entwined with a serpent became the symbol of medicine. In the seventh century B.C.E, Asclepius, aided by his two daughters, Hygeia and Panacea, superseded Apollo as the greatest of the healing gods, and temples in his name were built to heal the sick. According to legend, the centaur Chiron taught Asclepius pharmaceutical knowledge about drug plants.

Hippocrates, considered the originator of a Greek school of healing, was the first to clearly expound the concept that diseases had natural rather than supernatural causes. Various works attributed to him and to his school are contained in the Hippocratic Collection, which includes The Hippocratic Oath, Aphorisms, and various medical works. He was an expert in diagnosis, predicting the course of disease. Based on the color and pallor of the ill person, disease was considered to be an imbalance of the four "humors"—blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile—a concept that was to affect medicine for the next two thousand years. This concept persists in the following terms that describe distinctive temperaments: sanguine (warm and ardent), phlegmatic (sluggish, apathetic), and bilious (ill humored). Healing emphasis was placed on purges, attempts to purify the body from the illness produced by excesses or imbalance of humors. Hippocrates particularly noted the influence of food and diet on health, recommending moderation.

In the work On Ancient Medicine, Hippocrates notes differences in individual responses to food. He comments on the fact that some can eat cheese to satiety while others do not bear it well, a diagnosis of what we would now call lactose intolerance. The use of drugs was also an area of study: between two hundred and four hundred herbs were mentioned by the school of Hippocrates.

See also Greece, Ancient; Health and Disease; Medicine; Pythagoras.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hippocrates. Hippocratic Collection, in eight volumes. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1923–1988.

Hippocrates. Ancient Medicine. Airs, Waters, Places. Epidemics 1 & 3. The Oath. Precepts. Nutriment. Vol. I in the eight-volume Hippocratic Collection. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1923.

Jouanna, Jacques. Hippocrates. Translated by M. B. DeBevoise. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. Original edition: Hippocrate. Paris: Fayard, 1992.

Jules Janick