How did medicine develop in ancient Greece?

The ancient Greeks had an early origin of medicine and physiology. In the Homeric poems, we can already see the characters of doctors. In Agamemnon's expeditionary force, there was a physician named Macaon, who specialized in treating wounds from knives and swords. It is also in the epic that we meet the name of Asklepios, later the Greek god of medicine. In the Odyssey, Odysseus also sanitizes the house after killing the suitors, showing that people at that time were already more aware of themselves and of the relationship between the environment and health.

After the emergence of natural philosophy, the exploration of human beings has progressed, Anaximander conjectured that human beings evolved from fish in the sea, and the Pythagorean school prohibited people to eat beans and other foods from its mystery cult. By Empedocles, the understanding of man himself was further theorized. Empedocles was the first to propose a theory similar to "evolution of species and survival of the fittest" from his four roots. He said that from the mixture of the four elements came a variety of creatures, which existed in different ways and roamed the earth. These creatures were only individual limbs, such as heads, necks, legs, hands, and so on. Later, as a result of love and hate fighting on a large scale, these limbs chased each other and joined together, giving rise to animals and men. Needless to say, they came in all sorts of strange shapes, some with two faces, some with heads and no necks, some with countless arms and legs, and monsters with the heads of oxen, half-man, half-bull, half-male, half-female. In the end, many creatures became extinct because they were unable to reproduce, and only a few surviving species were preserved, of which man is only one.

Medicine and physiology are said to have been especially developed in Italy. According to Herodotus, the physicians of the city-state of Croton were especially famous, and a doctor named Democedes was successively state physician of Egina and Athens, and received a very high income. He also later went to Samos and became the personal physician of the tyrant Polycrates. After Samos was captured by Persia, he was sent as a captive to the Persian court, and was y favored for curing King Darius' ankle. But he knew that Persia was by no means a place to stay for long, so he took the opportunity to return to Italy after curing Queen Atossa of mastitis. When Persian envoys came to Croton to ask for him, the Crotonians refused their request and kept Democedes. It is also recorded that Alcmaeon of the Pythagorean school was not only a famous physician, but also dissected the human body and discovered the optic nerve in defiance of the religious customs of the time. And Empedocles used the dredging of a river to extinguish the plague of Selinas. On one occasion he is also said to have cured a woman who was thought to have been dead for a month, and was thus hailed as a man of God by the Sicilians.

Anaxagoras studied zoology. He focused on explaining certain variations in animals from a physiological point of view. It is said that once a sheep was brought in which had only one horn. The prophet Lampang claimed that this was an omen of a struggle between two factions in the city-state, the outcome of which would be that one faction would be victorious and take over the reins of power. Anaxagoras was displeased, believing that this was a purely natural phenomenon, and that the cause was simply that the other horn had been blocked and had not grown successfully. He ordered the sheep to be slaughtered and its head opened to show the cause to the people. He apparently upset the conservative elements of Athens with these actions and was thus accused of blasphemy, and he had to flee Athens.

The Greek city-states of the Classical era regarded their citizens as the lifeblood of their city-states, and took the health of their citizens quite seriously, with some city-states hiring doctors exclusively at the city-state's expense, of which the aforementioned Democedes was just one. However, the ones that the states were willing to hire were probably the famous ones, and more doctors either ran their own clinics or traveled in all directions.

On the other hand, due to the limitations of science and cultural knowledge, people's understanding of diseases was still very insufficient, and there was nothing they could do about many diseases, especially plague. The great plague of Athens in 430 B.C. killed many people, and the doctors were at their wits' end. At times like these, superstition and religion rise to the top, and people inevitably turn to the gods for advice. Throughout the Classical era, divination was the last resort for people to treat persistent illnesses. At the end of the 5th century B.C., the cult of Asclepios sprang up all over Greece, and the Athenians solemnly held ceremonies to bring this god of healing from abroad. But it was the sanctuary of Asclepios in the Peloponnese where the incense was most intense. It was said that when people slept in the temple, the god of healing would cure them in their dreams, and individuals were given prescriptions for medicines to take as they were prescribed, which actually worked.

It was in this context that Hippocrates engaged in medical research and practiced medicine. Hippocrates (about 460 ~ 377 BC) is a famous doctor in ancient Greece, the founder of European medicine, known as the "father of medicine". We don't know much about the life of the most famous doctor in ancient Greece. He was born on the island of Kos in about 460 B.C. He practiced medicine with his father from a young age, and practiced medicine in Greece, Asia Minor, the Black Sea coast and North Africa, and also engaged in medical education in the medical school on his hometown island of Kos. He enjoyed a high reputation during his lifetime, and Plato mentioned him twice in his books and called him "the divine doctor of Kos", while Aristotle, a little later, also called him a great doctor. He lived to be over 80 years old and died in Thessaly.

Unlike most physicians of his time, Hippocrates attached great importance to theoretical summaries and wrote a number of works. Not all of the works attributed to him that are in circulation today may have been written by him, but some were certainly completed by him. These writings cover all aspects of ancient medicine and generally reflect the medical level of the time and his own medical thinking.

Hippocrates, who did not believe in the fallacy of "divine illness," believed that all diseases, including epilepsy, which he and his contemporaries did not yet understand, were caused by some internal or external causes. As far as internal causes were concerned, he put forward the four-fluid theory, which held that the human organism was composed of four kinds of fluids: blood, mucus, yellow bile, and black bile. The different mixing ratios of these four fluids create different temperaments in human beings, and whichever of these fluids is dominant will be manifested as whichever temperament, e.g., those who have more blood are polycythemic, and those who have more mucus are mucous, and once the fluids are out of balance, the body will be sick. As far as external causes are concerned, the influence of the natural environment on a person is crucial, so a doctor, when arriving in an area, should have an understanding of the direction in which the area is situated, the soil, the quality of the water, the climate, the eating habits, the way of life and so on. And in the treatment process, the doctor, in addition to fully study the condition, should also take into account the patient's physique, family, and strive to coordinate multiple parties, to achieve the purpose of the medicine to the disease, otherwise, it is likely to double the effort and half the result.

For many specific diseases, Hippocrates also conducted research. He had a very precise knowledge of diseases such as urinary stones, fractures, cranial injuries, joint repositioning and the structure of the human body.

Hippocrates' greatest achievement lies in freeing medicine from primitive witchcraft, treating diseases and treatments in a rational manner, and laying the scientific foundation for medicine. In external science, Hippocrates also made significant contributions. At that time, religious customs prohibited human anatomy, Hippocrates and others broke through the ban, secretly carried out human anatomy, and obtained a lot of knowledge about the structure of the human body, laying a solid foundation for external science.

Hippocrates firmly believed that all kinds of human diseases were caused by physiological disorders and external influences, and advocated the theory of body fluids. He attached great importance to the natural environment, external conditions on human health, emphasizing that doctors should pay attention to the impact of various factors on the human body, which is very close to the modern ecological point of view. In the cause and treatment of disease, he also has a lot of innovative ideas, such as emphasizing the natural method, do not easily use drugs but believe in the healing power of nature and so on.

Hippocrates' greatest influence on later generations was the code of ethics he established for the profession of doctor, which became known as the "Hippocratic Oath". Its content is roughly: respect for teachers and parents, and carefully teach their children medical knowledge; use every effort to take medical measures in favor of the patient, not to bring pain and harm to the patient; do not give poison to anyone; enter the home of others, just to see the patient, not to do whatever they want, not to be bribed, not to seduce the opposite sex; about the private life of other people, no matter whether it has something to do with medical treatment or not, and never disclose it. These contents contain the main professional norms for doctors, and thus have been passed down in the West for more than 2,000 years. In 1948, the General Assembly of the World Federation of Medical Associations (WFMA) adopted the Declaration of Geneva, which was modeled on the Hippocratic Oath, and in the following year, the General Assembly of the WFMA proclaimed it as the International Code of Ethics for Medical Practitioners. "The Hippocratic Oath has thus become a valuable legacy for all mankind.

Hierophilos and Erasistratus were two of the most famous physicians in Alexandria at the time. Hierophilus wrote On Anatomy, On the Eye, and other works, but unfortunately they have been lost, and only a few fragments remain in the writings of Galen. His work on anatomy begins with a general guide to anatomy and then goes on to describe in detail the nervous, venous, digestive, reproductive, and skeletal systems of the human body. He devoted a chapter to the structure of the liver and its functions. Thanks to his vast knowledge of anatomy, he surpassed the Hippocratic school on many issues, for example, on the brain, he not only refuted Aristotle's error of the heart as the source of wisdom, but also distinguished between the cerebrum and the cerebellum, and recognized the connection between the brain, the spine, and the nerves. He scrutinized a wide variety of cases, and the names of certain diseases in use today are still attributed to him, while others were first discovered by him.

Erasistratus, who was slightly younger than Herophilos, was also a famous anatomist. He correctly described the role of the epiglottic cartilage in preventing food from entering the respiratory tract, and gained further insight into the construction of the brain and heart. He examined the distribution of arteries and veins throughout the human body, observing microvessels as far as the human eye could reach. He believed that after the human body inhales air, the air passes from the lungs into the heart, where it is transformed into energizing aura and then transported throughout the body with the arteries, a portion of which is transformed in the brain into soul aura for thinking, and then the soul aura is redistributed throughout the body. Here, Erasmus Tolatus actually had a preliminary concept of blood circulation, recognizing that the heart is similar to a water pressure pump, and that there is some kind of unseen connection between the arteries and veins. There was a preliminary concept of blood circulation. In the history of Western medicine, this is a major breakthrough.

Hellenistic era of the rise of the importance of the human body structure and human anatomy of the tradition, so that the Western medicine earlier broke the mysterious concept of the human body, the medical science on the basis of strict physiological anatomy, is conducive to the further development of medicine. Therefore, the development of medicine in the Hellenistic era is an important milestone in the history of the development of Western medicine.

Greek era medicine. The doctor on the left of the picture is seeing a patient, and the patient on the right of the picture is waiting.