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Essay on Hippocrates - "The Father of Medicine"
Introduction
As the Greek empire declined, Rome inherited its medical traditions and knowledge. During the 1st and 2nd centuries A.D health standards dropped considerably and outbreaks occurred of life threatening diseases. Galen of Pergamon, a follower of Hippocrates, gathered much of the medical knowledge of the time and added to it his studies of anatomy and physiology mostly of animals.
In Spite of his errors in describing certain anatomical and physiology phenomena, his writing created the foundation for medicine over 1500 years later in Europe. Though Galen created a historical event, he indeed followed and admired one of the greatest doctors of ancient Greece Hippocrates (Arnott, 1996). A physician and a surgeon he became a leader of a medical school on the Aegean island of Cos his works are contained in the Hippocrates corpus, over 70 volumes of case histories and thoughts on the practice of medicine, role of environmental health and sacred diseases. Although other non-Hippocrates doctors made diagnosis, the Cos physicians would try and predict the outcome of their patients. Hippocrates adopted a view that Breath is the most necessary component of our bodies and if it flowed freely produces heath if impeded produces disease. Hippocrates says that diseases are caused by the differences in the elemental components of the human organism (Arnott, 1996).
Hippocrates
The central historical figure in Greek medicine is Hippocrates "FATHER OF MEDICINE". He provided an example of the ideal physician after which others centuries after him patterned their existence. He was associated with the Asclepium of Cos, an island off the coast of Asia Minor, near Rhodes and with a group of medical treaties know collectively as the Hippocratic Corpus (Bailey, 1996).
Hippocrates, greatest physician of antiquity, is regarded as the father of medicine. Born on the island of Kos, Greece in the year 460 BC....
