| Hippocrates of Kos | |
|---|---|
| Birthplace | Kos, Ancient Greece |
| Occupation | Physician |
Born 460 B.C. on the island of Cos; died 377 B.C. (according to other data 356 B.C.) near Larisa, Thessaly. Ancient Greek physician and reformer of ancient medicine.
Hippocrates received his medical education under the guidance of his father, Heraclides. Hippocrates’ mother, Phenareta, was a midwife. It is believed that Hippocrates belonged to the 17th generation of a medical family from which the Coan school of physicians emerged. Hippocrates led the life of a traveling physician (periodeut) in Greece, Asia Minor, and Libya; he visited the peoples inhabiting the shores of the Black Sea and also the Scythians, which enabled him to acquaint himself with the medicine of the peoples of Southwest Asia and Egypt. The writings attributed to Hippocrates that have survived to the present day represent a collection of 59 works by various authors, gathered by scholars of the Alexandria Library. Among the works most often ascribed to Hippocrates himself are Airs, Waters, and Places; Prognosis; Regimen in Acute Diseases; the first and third books of Epidemics; Aphorisms; Joints; Fractures; and Wounds in the Head.
Hippocrates’ achievement lay in freeing medicine from the influence of priestly temple medicine and defining the path of its independent development. Hippocrates taught that the physician must treat not the disease but the patient, paying attention to the individual characteristics of the body and the environment. He proceeded from the idea of the determining influence of the environment on the formation of the bodily (constitution) and spiritual (temperament) characteristics of the human being. Hippocrates distinguished these factors (climate, quality of the water and the soil, people’s way of life, laws of the land) from the point of view of their influence on human beings. He was the originator of medical geography.
Hippocrates distinguished four basic types of people according to their constitution: sanguine, choleric, phlegmatic, and melancholic. He elaborated problems of etiology and rejected the supernatural and divine origin of diseases. He established the principal stages in the development of disease and elaborated problems of diagnosis. Hippocrates proposed four principles of treatment: to bring benefit and not harm, to treat the contradictory with contradiction, to help nature, and while exercising caution, to spare the patient. Famous as an outstanding surgeon, he worked out methods of using bandages and treatments for fractures and luxations, wounds, fistulas, hemorrhoids, and empyema. Hippocrates is credited with the text of the so-called physician’s oath (the Oath of Hippocrates), which concisely formulates the moral standards of behavior for a physician. (However, the original version of the oath existed even in Egypt.) Hippocrates is called the father of medicine.
I. B. ROZANOV