Hippocrates (460–370 BCE)
Hippocrates is widely recognised today as the ‘father of medicine’. He was born on the Aegean island of Kos to a wealthy family, where his father was a physician. He is said to have learned medicine from his father and grandfather and other notable physicians, e.g.
Herodicus. He almost certainly studied at the Askleipion (healing temple) of Kos. Askleipions were commonplace in Greece, with several hundred known to have existed – they operated in a similar fashion to the health spas of today, with emphasis on rest, diet and baths. Most of the information we have about Hippocrates himself comes from his earliest biographer, Soranus, a second-century CE Greek physician, with further information from the much later Suidas and Tzetzes.4We know from the above that Hippocrates travelled widely across Greece and that he was sufficiently well regarded for his medical expertise to be sought after by the King of Macedonia (Perdiccas) and the King of Persia (Artaxerxes). Two contemporaries certainly knew of him: Plato referred to him as Hippocrates Asclepiad, using a Greek medical title, and his fame was recognised by Aristotle, who referred to him as ‘The Great Hippocrates’. Plato (in Phaedrus) stated a basic principle of Hippocratic medicine was that understanding of the body required understanding of nature as a whole. In fact, Hippocrates is credited with bringing disease out of the shadow of the supernatural and into the light of rational thought, where he regarded it as a natural phenomenon.
The main work that bears his name is the Hippocratic Corpus, a collection of about sixty medical treatises that was certainly the work of several, or even many, different authors, and probably spanning several centuries. The authorship of Hippocrates himself to any of these is unproven, but most scholars agree that a dozen or so of the collection might be ascribed to him.
His approach seems aptly summed up by the following: ‘The body’s nature is the physician in disease. Nature finds the way for herself, not from thought.’5
This is not to say that medicines, drugs, ‘recipes’, etc., were not used. Where medicines were used, spices and herbs were often part of the prescription. In Regimen in Acute Diseases, for example, black hellebore was mixed with cumin, anise, euphorbia, juice of silphium to soften the bowel;6 in Epidemics spodium (burned bone), saffron, stone of a fruit, white lead and myrrh were mixed together for an eye condition;7 saffron and beans or beans with cumin are used against upset intestines;8 ground Egyptian nitre, coriander and cumin were used as a pessary to stimulate conception;9 cumin and egg in broth helped alleviate chest pain;10 Ethiopian cumin in wine and honey linctus for a breathing problem.11 Many other examples illustrate the use of spices for medicinal means in the time of Hippocrates; most of these are from plants more or less locally available, and a few are exotics from the Far East, e.g. pepper and castorium solution to relieve toothache,12 cardamom, cucumber and opium to treat fever an intestinal problem.13 L. M. V. Totelin listed exotic ingredients of the Hippocratic Corpus, many from the gynaecological treatises, which included amomum, galbanum, sweet flag, cardamom, cassia, cinnamon, safflower, frankincense, spikenard, pepper, sumac, sagapenum, ginger grass, silphium, myrrh, styrax, terebinth (resin from the Pistacia tree), saffron and cumin.14
Treatment was generally passive, however, with rest and simple treatments typical. Many case histories were accumulated in the Corpus which helped in prognosis of disease. The passive concept is illustrated by the instruction in Epidemics I, as good advice today as then: ‘Declare the past, diagnose the present, foretell the future; practise these acts. As to diseases, make a habit of two things – to help, or at least, to do no harm.’15