Hippocrates c.460-377/359BC
Greek physician

Known as the 'father of medicine', and associated with the medical profession's Hippocratic oath, this most celebrated physician of antiquity was born and practised on the island of Cos, but little is known of him except that he taught for money. Skilled in diagnosis and prognosis, he gathered together all the work of his predecessors which he believed to be sound, and laid the early foundations of scientific medicine. His followers developed the theories that the four fluids or 'humours' (blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile) of the body are the primary seats of disease. The Hippocratic writings contain many treatises which long exerted great influence. The Hippocratic oath, for example, has been seen as the foundation document of Western medical ethics, and is still occasionally used in a Christianized version. Of Hippocrates's works, Airs, Waters, Places contained shrewd observations about the geography of disease and the role of the environment in shaping the health of a community; Epidemics III examined epidemics in a population and offered case histories of patients with acute diseases;The Sacred Disease elaborated a rigorous defence of the naturalistic causes of diseases; and Aphorisms consisted of a series of short pithy statements, mostly about clinical situations, but beginning with the most famous,'Life is short, the art is long'.

Bibliography: Edwin Burton Levine, Hippocrates (1971)