Hippocrates

Hippocrates of Kos was a Greek physician who practised during the age of Pericles, in the second half of the fifth century BC. He is widely regarded as one of the most important figures in the history of medicine, and he is often called the 'Father of Medicine'. His lasting importance lies less in any single discovery than in the way he understood the healing art: he separated it from religion and from speculative philosophy, and helped turn it into a profession with its own standards. Very little can be said with certainty about what he himself thought or wrote, because his name became attached to the wider tradition of his school and to the many treatises of the Hippocratic Corpus.

Biographical details are scarce and partly doubtful. According to Soranus of Ephesus, a second-century physician who wrote the first known biography, his father Heraclides was also a doctor, and Hippocrates learned the craft from him and from his grandfather. He is said to have studied philosophy and other subjects with Democritus and Gorgias, and he probably trained at the asclepieion on Kos. He was a pupil of the Thracian physician Herodicus of Selymbria. The only contemporary mention that survives appears in Plato's Protagoras, which calls him 'Hippocrates of Kos, the Asclepiad'. His son-in-law Polybus, also his pupil, was regarded by Galen as his true successor. Hippocrates taught and practised throughout his life and travelled as far as Thessaly, Thrace and the Sea of Marmara. He is believed to have died at Larissa, aged somewhere between 83 and 90, although some sources claim he lived well past a century.

The school associated with his name, the Koan school, differed from the rival school of Cnidus. Cnidus concentrated on identifying the exact disease; Cos focused on the patient, the course of the illness and its prognosis. Because the dissection of human bodies was forbidden in Greece, knowledge of anatomy and physiology was very limited, and the Koan approach proved more effective at the bedside. Its treatment was gentle and largely passive. It trusted the body's own healing power, which the physician aimed to support through rest, cleanliness and careful observation. Drugs were used reluctantly, though they were not refused entirely.

Central to his medicine was the theory of the four humours: blood, black bile, yellow bile and phlegm. Health was a balance among them and illness a disturbance of that balance, so treatment sought to restore it. Another key idea was the crisis, a decisive turning point in an illness after which the patient either improved or declined, often linked to fixed critical days. Diet, too, was thought to need adjusting to climate and season. Much of this theory was abandoned as later anatomy and physiology advanced, but his habit of careful observation and written record has endured.

His influence was considerable. The practice of noting symptoms exactly, examining the patient and recording the case objectively became a model for physicians who followed. The oath associated with his name remains a reference point in medical ethics, although the text we have today is later than he was. His treatments drew criticism in later centuries, and some modern writers mocked their passivity. Even so, Hippocrates remains the standard image of the ancient doctor, and the ideal of a medicine grounded in clinical observation and professional responsibility owes him a great deal.