Hippocrates

Hippocrates of Cos (c. 460 BC - 377 BC) was an Ancient Greek physician, is commonly regarded as one of the most outstanding figures in medicine of all time and has been called the father of medicine. He was the leader of the medical school of Kos. Writings attibuted to him rejected the superstition and magic of primitive "medicine" and laid the foundations of medicine as a branch of science.

Hippocrates associated personality traits with the relative abundance of the four humours in the body: phlegm, yellow bile, black bile, and blood, and was a major influence on Galen.

The Hippocratic Corpus, a collection of about sixty treatises, most written between 430 BC and 330 BC, is actually a group of texts written by several different people holding several different viewpoints erroneously grouped under the name of Hippocrates at the Library of Alexandria. Most texts included in the Corpus are not considered to have been written by Hippocrates himself, and in fact many were written by his son-in-law Polybus. The best known of the Hippocratic writings is the Hippocratic Oath; however, this text was most likely not written by Hippocrates himself. A famous, time-honoured medical rule ascribed to Hippocrates is Primum non nocere ("first, do no harm").

Table of contents

Works

Aphorisms
Instruments Of Reduction
Of The Epidemics
On Airs, Waters, And Places
On Ancient Medicine
On Fistulae
On Fractures
On Hemorrhoids
On Injuries Of The Head
On Regimen In Acute Diseases
On The Articulations
On The Sacred Disease
On The Surgery
On Ulcers
The Book Of Prognostics
The Law
The Oath

Quotes

""There are, in fact, two things: science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance."