Hippocratic medicine
Medicina racional hipocrática (observación clínica y pronóstico)
- Date
- c. 420 BCE · confidence medium
- Place
- Kos, Greece
- Credited to
- Hippocrates of Kos and the school of Kos (Corpus Hippocraticum)
- Field
- Life & health
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
A method that explains disease by natural causes (humours, environment, diet) rather than divine ones, with case histories, systematic observation, prognosis and professional ethics (the oath). The birth of medicine as a rational technique.
The Corpus is the work of many authors of the 5th-4th centuries BCE; Ayurvedic medicine (Charaka) and Chinese medicine (Huangdi Neijing) developed parallel rational systems.
What it led to
- A medical profession with an ethical code and formal training
- Written case histories and epidemiology (Airs, Waters, Places)
- Humoral theory, dominant until the 19th century
- Galenic, Islamic and medieval university medicine
Built on
- Greek alphabet with vowelsc. 800 BCE
- Egyptian medicine (Edwin Smith papyrus)
- Ionian natural philosophy
Made possible
- Systematic pharmacopoeia (Dioscorides' De materia medica)c. 65 CE
- Experimental anatomy and physiology (Galen)c. 170 CE
- Galen's anatomical dissection
- Dioscorides's pharmacopoeia
- Hippocratic oath
- Alexandria school of medicine