the real and true rational medicine is attributed to hippocrates

8/13/2019 The Real and True Rational Medicine is Attributed to Hippocrates

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The real and true rational medicine is attributed to Hippocrates (ca. 460-377 B.C.) , so he is

known as the father of medicine. Hippocrates was born on the island of Kos, in the Dodecanese,

where he developed the rational school with which a great many of the ideas attributed toHippocrates are associated. He lived in the 50 years of ericlean peace, a period in which

philosophy flourished, and travelled e!tensively in the "editerranean area. #e know that his

$ourneys took him, inter alia, to mainland %reece, &icily, 'le!andria, (yrine, and (yprus.)undamentally, the basis of rational medicine is a negation of divine intervention in the disease.

*ven the famous sacred illness, epilepsy, was attributed to a dysfunction of the organism.

Hippocrates also made humours correspond with the seasons+ the first season, that of blood andair corresponded to spring the summer was fire, bile and liver autumn was earth, black bile and

spleen, while winter was the season of water, of phlegm -mucus and of the brain. /n addition, a

parallel was drawn between the four seasons of life, infancy and early youth, then mature youth,

followed by virile advanced years, and, ultimately, senility.

eferring back to what 'lcmaeon of (rotone had said, Hippocrates maintained that disease was

caused by a dise1uilibrium, no longer speaking of democracy or monarchy so as not to offend

the tyrants, and that where there was e1uilibrium between the humours there was health. (ureslay in removing the humour that was in e!cess. His theory also e!plained the various

temperaments+ a coleric sub$ect had too much bile, a phlegmatic one too much mucus, and so on.

The most important element at the centre of Hippocrates2 conception was not the disease, which

he e!plained in a holistic manner, but man. (ompared to the rival (nidus2s school, whichfocussed on a reductionist conception of disease much as occurs today, Hippocrates2 conception

made his school2s fortune his school prevailed as it concentrated on the man, while that of

(nidus concentrated on the disease and, because it did not have the necessary evidence to carryout its ideas, it ceased to e!ist, whereas that of Hippocrates remained active.

3nderlying Hippocrates2 conceptions was a profound and practical philosophy based notably on

common sense. The fundamental principles were simply to leave things to nature, that is to say,to the healing powers of nature, and to observe the illness very carefully, intervening as little aspossible, and paying attention to nutrition and to the wholesomeness and healthiness of the air. /n

order to eliminate the dise1uilibrium, the e!cess material -the so4called materia peccans had to

be removed. "eans available to dispose of materia peccanswere 2headpurges2 - purges of thehead which consisted of inducing snee6ing with drugs such as pepper, and enema -clyster, or

otherwise by blood4letting. The latter was not much used by Hippocrates2 followers, but in the

oman *poch, and especially in the "iddle 'ges, it became a very common procedure withgrave conse1uences for patients who, in some cases were bled to death. /t must be noted,

however, that, Hippocrates recommended that physicians employ all medical treatments with the

ma!imum of frugality.

Hippocrates te!ts, or those believed to be such, were taught in the universities until 7800. Thesete!ts were composed of a series of aphorisms, amongst which is the famous 9:ife is brief, art is

long, opportunity is fleeting, e!perience is fallacious, $udgment is difficult9 these form the basis

of his philosophy and lead to careful, repetitious thought before a medical intervention.

Hippocrates thus created a holistic medicine based on the man or microcosm, preaching the useof the available therapies with the ma!imum of conservation. emedies were few because at that


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time pharmacology did not e!ist and the first hint of herbal medicine did not arrive until about a

century later, from one of 'ristotle2s students called Theophrastus. Hippocrates is also

remembered because he e!pressed the first concepts of medical ethics, which still apply today,and in fact are contained in the Hippocratic oath, effectively encoding the person of the doctor.


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HIPPOCRATES

Fater o! "e#ici$e"edical historians generally look to Hippocrates as the founder of medicine as a rational

science. /t was Hippocrates who finally freed medicine fromthe shackles of magic, superstition,

and the supernatural.

Hippocrates collected data andconducted e!periments to show that disease was a natural process that the signs and symptoms

of a disease were caused by the natural reactions of the body to the disease process and that thechief role of the physician was to aid the natural resistance of the body to overcome the

metabolic imbalance and restore health and harmony to the organism.

Hippocrates was born on the island of (os, off the southwest coast of 'sia "inor, or present4

day Turkey, around ;


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The (nidian school considered the body to be merely a collection of isolated parts, and saw

diseases manifesting in a particular organ or body part as affecting that part only, which alone

was treated. Their system of diagnosis was also faulty, relying e!clusively on the sub$ectivesymptoms related by the patient, while totally ignoring the ob$ective signs of the disease.

Hippocrates radically disagreed with the (nidian school, countering that the human body

functioned as one unified organism, orphysis, and must be treated, in health and disease, as onecoherent, integrated whole. /n diagnosis, not only the patient2s sub$ective symptoms, but the

ob$ective signs of the disease must also be considered to arrive at an accurate assessment of what

was going on.'s his main unifying theory for the holistic understanding of the human organism and how it

functions in health and disease, Hippocrates used the concept of the Fo'r H'ors. 'lthough

the groundwork of humoral physiology and pathology had already been laid by his predecessors,

Hippocrates finally brought the thory of the )our Humors into its classical form. Health is a harmonious balance of the )our Humors. Disease results from their disharmony

and imbalance. The physician2s $ob is to restore health by correcting the imbalance and restoring

harmony to the humors. To 1uote Hippocrates+

"The body of man has in itself blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile; these make up thenature of the body, and through these he feels pain or enjoys health. Now, he enjoys the most

perfect health when these elements are duly proportioned to one another in respect tocompounding, power and bulk, and when they are perfectly mingled. Pain is felt when one of

these elements is in defect or excess, or is isolated in the body without being compounded with

all the others."

4 The >ature of "an

Hippocrates took his band of renegade physicians with him to the island of (os. There, they

set about to revolutioni6e the art of medicine and put its theory and practice on a truer, sounder

footing.

Hippocratic "e#ici$e

hysiology and pathology in Hippocratic medicine was based on the )our Humors. ' united

confluence and sympathy between all four humors working together was necessary for goodhealth. Pneuma the =reath or ?ital )orce, and the /nnate Heat, which were suffused into the

blood from the lungs via the heart, gave the blood the power to sustain life.

Hippocrates sawpepsis, or an orderly, balanced, harmonious digestion and metabolism of the)our Humors as being essential to all good health. /n disorders ofpepsis Hippocrates saw the

origin of most disease.

Hippocrates2 anatomical knowledge was rather scant, but this is compensated for by hisprofound insights into human physiology and the soundness of his reasoning. =ut even so, his

surgical techni1ues for dislocations of the hip and $aw were unsurpassed until the nineteenth

century.

/n therapeutics, Hippocrates saw the physician as the servant and facilitator of >ature. 'llmedical treatment was aimed at enabling the natural resistance of the organism to prevail and

overcome the disease, to bring about recovery.


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/n the treatments he prescribed, Hippocrates was very sensible, pragmatic and fle!ible in his

approach, favoring conservatism and moderation over radical or e!treme measures.

=loodletting, which was much abused at other times in medicine2s history, was used only rarelyby Hippocrates, and even then, only applied conservatively.

Hippocrates placed great emphasis on strengthening and building up the body2s inherent

resistance to disease. )or this, he prescribed diet, gymnastics, e!ercise, massage, hydrotherapyand sea bathing.

Hippocrates was a great believer in dietary measures in the treatment of disease. He

prescribed a very slender, light diet during the crisis stage of an acute illness, and a li1uid dietduring the treatment of fevers and wounds.

Hippocratic medicine was constitutionally based, so its approach to diagnosis and treatment

was 1uite fle!ible. 's a holistic healing system, Hippocratic medicine treated the patient, and

not $ust the disease. Hippocrates was the first physician to systematically classify diseases based on points of

similarity and contrast between them. He virtually originated the disciplines of etiology and

pathology. =y systematically classifying diseases, Hippocrates placed their diagnosis and

treatment on a sounder footing.

Te Hippocratic Corp's

The Hippocratic (orpus is a collection of over


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the real and true rational medicine is attributed to hippocrates

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