What is the significance of hippocrates in the history of medicine

There is actually no ban in the Oath on euthanasia in our modern sense of an option when a person is suffering from an incurable condition. Instead, the Oath suggests a much broader concern for keeping control of potentially fatal drugs rather than handing them out to those who could misuse them. And it leaves open the possibility of an abortive drug taken by another route — by mouth — being administered by a physician.

Maybe the real worry in the Oath here is about the pessary as a particularly potent mode of administration, or again about letting drugs pass out of the hands of the physician to those who may misuse them. Perhaps physicians had been doing precisely this, and the patients had completely lost faith in those who claimed that they could heal them.

Linking all these very different ancient Greek documents together and tying them to the name of Hippocrates has been common since just a few centuries after he lived.

Perhaps it makes us feel better to see one, humane, person rather than a faceless committee at the origins of medicine and medical ethics. And not just any person, but this idealised figure, the perfect physician who is more knowledgeable and more caring than any living physician we are ever likely to meet. Over the history of medicine, we have made up the character of Hippocrates to fit what we think physicians, or medicine itself, should be like.

Even the Oath has been edited to fit different societies. Children of migration as brokers of 'care' — Walton Hall, Buckinghamshire. Portsmouth Climate Festival — Portsmouth, Portsmouth. Edition: Available editions United Kingdom.

Important also seems to be the development of the Hippocratics' medium, the written prose treatise. In contrast to the writing of poetry, written prose develops slowly in the Greek world; medical writers, historians, and writers of political and judicial speeches seize upon it at approximately the same moment, and in their hands written prose rapidly gains sophistication. The figure of a concerned and conscientious physician attracted not only a host of apocryphal legends about his great deeds, but also the heterogeneous collection of early medical writings known as the Hippocratic Corpus.

These treatises collected under Hippocrates' name in Hellenistic times, certainly in Alexandria by the middle of the third century B. Ancient scholar-physicians who worked on the treatises as glossators and commentators were bothered by their heterogeneity of styles and their contradictory contents, and they borrowed methods current in Homeric criticism to explain them.

Some suggested that Hippocrates' life was prodigiously long perhaps years! The "best" treatises were judged to be compositions from the hand of "The Great Hippocrates, Father of Medicine" at the height of his intellectual powers. Galen , practicing medicine at Rome in the latter half of the second century A. The son, Galen supposes, misunderstood his father's intentions, and although the lad expanded what he found, what he published remained, in Galen's view, "unfinished works-in-progress.

Contradictions of fact also bothered subsequent readers, and the earliest extant references to the Hippocratic Oath, from the first century A. Neither Scribonius Largus nor Soranus is worried about the historical and scholarly issues regarding Hippocrates, but they do wonder about what the oath prescribes for their own practice of medicine in Rome of the Principate. Each decides that he can summon Hippocrates as authority on the use of abortives.

Scribonius Largus does so to prohibit all abortions, citing another Hippocratic principle, namely that medicine is the art of healing, not harming. Soranus decides that the Oath prohibits only abortive pessaries and that other procedures are permitted when the life of the mother is in danger, and he adds that he would never prescribe an abortive to preserve a woman's youthful beauty or to conceal her adulteries.

The figure of Hippocrates as "Father of Medicine" remains a potent one in medical circles throughout antiquity and beyond, although he is increasingly viewed through Galen's lens, which pictures an Hippocrates who is very much like Galen himself. Galen's enthusiasm for certain texts in the Hippocratic Corpus was crucial to the continuing interest later physicians took in Hippocrates and his writings, and Hippocratic texts were copied in sufficient numbers to survive into Byzantine times and be reimported into the West during the Renaissance.

By contrast, once the Corpus was translated into Latin early in the sixteenth century, the prestige of Hippocrates and his writings escalated throughout Europe, as physicians continued the practice, now more than a millennium and a half old, of combing the Corpus in search of precedents for the medicine they were themselves currently practicing. Plants were processed for their medicinal elements.

The Corpus also describes how joints could be repositioned, the importance of keeping records of case histories and treatments, and the relationship between the weather and some illnesses. Doctors at the time only observed sick people, not the diseases themselves. Most descriptions of internal organs were based on what could be seen or felt externally. Dissections of animals were performed to make comparisons with the human body, but fifth-century Greek ethics forbid dismemberment of humans.

Originally, Hippocrates was credited with composing the oath, however, newer research indicates it was written after his death by other physicians influenced by the medical practices in the Corpus. Though not applied in its original form today, the many modernized versions that exist serve as the foundation for the oath medical graduates take at the start of their careers.

Little is known about Hippocrates' death or age, though it is widely held that he died in the Ancient Greek town of Larissa, around BCE. Many historians believe he may have lived into his 80s or 90s.

What is known is that he made a major contribution to medicine and set a standard for ethical practices. We strive for accuracy and fairness.

If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us! Subscribe to the Biography newsletter to receive stories about the people who shaped our world and the stories that shaped their lives. Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, together with Socrates and Plato, laid much of the groundwork for western philosophy. Socrates was an ancient Greek philosopher considered to be the main source of Western thought.