-"First, do no harm." - attributed to Hippocrates (460-370 BC) of Kos (an island in the southeast of the Aegean Sea, off the west coast of Turkey), the founder of modern medicine. However, from what we can tell the earliest this appeared in writing is in "Epidemics", a work attributed to Hippocrates but whose true authorship is actually unclear.
-What about the "Hippocratic Oath"?
-There is indeed a book attributed to Hippocrates called "The Hippocratic Oath" (AKA "The Oath"), but it's unclear/unlikely that he actually wrote it.
-More than 60 works have (like The Oath) have actually been attributed to him, the entirety of which make up the "Hippocratic Corpus".
-According to Plato, Hippocrates was a teacher and taught students medicine and shit (for a fee, of course).
-The Hippocratic Corpus:
-Taught about the way a doctor should behave, causes of disease, medical procedures, gynecology, diet, exercise, etc.
-At this time, medicine still was kind of connected to religion (like philosophy).
-For example, during this time epilepsy was known as "the sacred disease" due to its association with visions and seizures.
-Hippocrates tried to combat the notion that it was "sacred", and that it was just a disease of affliction similar to any other bodily problem.
-However, he still believed that diseases and afflictions were caused by natural forces, which are in essence divine (which perhaps means ultimately that they are the creation or causes of divine forces, but not directly caused by them via random divine intervention).
-Believed that all of nature is divine (or divine in origin), similar to the philosophy of Xenophanes.
-During this time, Greek medicine was traditionally combined with religion.
-Various cults asked supreme beings for healing, such as the cult of Asclepius, whose priests also acted as doctors/healers.
-Asclepius' symbol of the snake around the staff (The Rod of Asclepius) is where we get this symbol for medicine today!
-The cult of Asclepius actually got really big in Ancient Greece, including Kos, where they erected an asclepeion (a temple dedicated to Asclepius). It was at this temple where Hippocrates allegedly received his medical training.
-However, the Hippocratics (who came along welcomed the idea of praying to the gods, but also wanted to understand and cure diseases from a human perspective as well.
-Other Pre-Socratic philosophers got involved in medicine too, trying to figure out why we got sick, what sickness is, etc., from a rational point of view.
-Many of them (such as Empedocles) linked health to its relationship with the four elements, while others (like Anaxagoras or Diogenes of Appalonia) introduced the idea of pneuma ("air" or "breath").
-One of the books of the Hippocratic Corpus, "On Medicine", talks about how important it is to actually veer away from the ideas of Empedocles and the others and get into a more rational, "scientific" theory and practice.
-Another Hippocratic theory that emerged at this time was the concept of "humors" (bodily fluids).
-Blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile were all described in Hippocrates' (allegedly) "On the Nature of Man" and matched up with personality traits (as opposed to diseases). For example, we get the word "melancholy" from this (melankholía ("black bile" in Greek)) or the adjectives "sanguin" or "phlegmatic" from these concepts.
-The practice of bloodletting (which Hippocratic will eventually begin to perform) comes from this school of thought. However, in general the Hippocratics tried to avoid surgical shit like this, and preferred to act more as like general practitioners.
-The Hippocratics were also really into preventative medicine and believed that medicine was an art, not a set of rules that can just be applied to anyone for a diagnosis. Everyone is different!
-Also were into holistic medicine- one shouldn't just focus on one part of the body if it has a problem; the whole body itself is important in this matter!
-Finally, the Hippocratics believed that the human body was a microcosm, a tiny version of the universe itself! Laws that apply to the universe thus apply to human health as well.
-Thus, philosophy began to spread into other facets of Greek daily life, and wasn't just for thinkers with too much time on their hands :)
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