Hippocrates of Kos
(ca. 460 - 370 BCE)
Hippocrates of Kos (c. 460 – 370 BCE) was a Greek physician traditionally regarded as the "Father of Medicine". Born on the Aegean island of Kos into a family said to be descended from the god Aesculapius, he traveled widely as a physician and teacher. Plato and Aristotle both refer to him as a distinguished doctor, and later accounts lionize him as . the singular revolutionary who emphasized natural rather than supernatural explanations of disease. However, Greek medicine in his time continued to combine observation, natural explanation, religious practice, and traditional healing.
Hippocrates is associated with the Hippocratic Corpus, a collection of some sixty medical texts composed by several authors ca. 600 ~ 400 BCE, and which were know to Roman physicians such as Galen. They emphasize detailed observation, prognosis (prediction of the course of sickness, rather than diagnosis, identification of sickness), diet, and environmental factors (e.g., heat and cold). One of his best known texts, On the Sacred Disease, described epilepsy, and argued that, "With regard to : it appears to me to be nowise more divine nor more sacred than other diseases, but has a natural cause from which it originates like other affections. Men who regard its nature and cause as divine do so from ignorance and wonder..." The Hippocratic Oath is traditionally associated with his name, though he did not write it in its current form: the illustration above shows him refusing riches from an Emperor for treatment. His importance is as the medical ideal represented by his name: disciplined clinical observation, reasoned explanation, and an ethical responsibility toward patients.