Ancient Greek
Hippocrates
c. 460–370 BC
“Healing is a matter of time, but it is sometimes also a matter of opportunity.”
The writings attributed to Hippocrates of Cos treat medicine as an art grounded in observation of the body, climate, and regimen. traces the craft to the discovery of diets suited to the sick, and explains disease by natural causes, diet, and constitution. Divine wrath alone is no longer a sufficient account. Nature leads the art. Prognosis, case history, and the Oath fix standards for a healing profession. Later Galenic and modern medicine still claim that starting point.
In the Conversation
1 of the Great Ideas