by Valarie Juntunen

Created on: December 24, 2011   Last Updated: December 25, 2011

The best way to understand the progression of medical knowledge is to compare the three great ancient healers: Hippocrates, Galen, and Avicenna. Even though we compare their ideas and methodologies, keep in mind that these healers did not exist side-by-side. Rather, these intellectual giants came one after another, like stepping stones, to modern medicine.

Hippocrates, often called the "Father of Medicine", was an ancient Greek physician. He was born somewhere around 460 B.C. In this time all illness was thought to be caused by mystical powers. Most often a person who was ill would be taken to a temple to beg forgiveness from whatever God he or she was thought to have angered. Hippocrates disagreed with this philosophy. He understood that illness was not mystical but natural. He believed in observing the patient and recording all symptoms in an effort to forecast the progression of an illness.  

Hippocrates became the first professor of medicine, teaching such things as clinical observation, medical cause and effect, and an adherence to a systematic approach to medicine. Hippocrates went on to write down his observations and assumptions, which was then added to over a period of 150 years by other healers. This collection of works is known as "The Hippocratic Collection" or "Hippocratic Corpus".  His writings chronicled the idea that the body had four humours, or fluids, which when out of balance, caused illness. He also believed that every illness had a crisis or time in which the illness dramatically either improved or worsened. This point of crisis is where it would be decided if the illness was terminal. Hippocrates did not believe in diagnosing and treating the illness itself, but rather on treating the person that was ill. Thus his treatments centered on helping the body to heal itself and included rest, immobilization, and changes to diet.

After Hippocrates died, the ideas of observation largely fell to the way-side. Mystical healing continued with little regard to his scientific, systematic approach. It was not until future physicians, several hundred years later, studied the Hippocratic Corpus that his teachings began to be revived. However, it was not necessarily his medical advancements that made Hippocrates one of the most famous names in medical history – it was his teachings on how physicians should behave. Hippocrates wrote that physicians should be held to a higher standard and gave examples for how medical areas should be set

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