Hippocrates
(History of Medicine ... 2)
The Greeks offered us more than beautiful legends and a physician who was a God. They also gave us the Father of Medicine. Hippocrates was the first man who believed that diseases did not result from punishments inflicted by the Gods. He assured his disciples that they resulted from natural causes, environment and habits.
Because of these concepts he was arrested, spending 20 years of his life in prison. It was during these years that he wrote most of his texts on Medicine.
He was born in the island of Kos around the year 460 BC and lived for 83 or 90 years, according to different sources.
He also established the Ethics of medical practice; parts of his oath are universally read by the young doctors when they graduate from Medical School. In the old days it began like this:
I swear by Apollo the physician, and Asclepius, and Hygieia and Panacea, and I take to witness all the gods and godesses that, according to my ability and judgement, I will keep this Oath ...
I find this introduction to his Aphorisms very inspiring:
“Life is short, and Art long; the crisis, fleeting; experience, perilous, and decision, difficult.”
The Greeks offered us more than beautiful legends and a physician who was a God. They also gave us the Father of Medicine. Hippocrates was the first man who believed that diseases did not result from punishments inflicted by the Gods. He assured his disciples that they resulted from natural causes, environment and habits.
Because of these concepts he was arrested, spending 20 years of his life in prison. It was during these years that he wrote most of his texts on Medicine.
He was born in the island of Kos around the year 460 BC and lived for 83 or 90 years, according to different sources.
He also established the Ethics of medical practice; parts of his oath are universally read by the young doctors when they graduate from Medical School. In the old days it began like this:
I swear by Apollo the physician, and Asclepius, and Hygieia and Panacea, and I take to witness all the gods and godesses that, according to my ability and judgement, I will keep this Oath ...
I find this introduction to his Aphorisms very inspiring:
“Life is short, and Art long; the crisis, fleeting; experience, perilous, and decision, difficult.”
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