Hippocrates is the Fist Known Physician to Consider Medicine as Science

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Before the humoral theory was developed, it was believed that angry gods or evil spirits were the causing factors of disease. In order to cure themselves, people had to beg the gods for forgiveness or rid the evil spirits from their body. In turn, the priests who performed the healing became the first known physicians (Francko 372). This theory of magic being the cause of disease was believed for many years throughout the people. It was not until a Greek physician proposed a different theory being the cause of disease that people changed their view of illness forever.

Hippocrates of Cos lived from 460 B.C to 377 B.C, and he was often named the father of Western Medicine for coming up with the humoral theory (Pickover 40). According to David Francko, Hippocrates was “the first know physician to consider medicine a science separate from the practice of religion” (Francko 373). In the humoral theory, Hippocrates also dismisses primeval beliefs that disease had supernatural causes and associates it with physical causes (New Standard Encyclopedia 244). In Hippocrates’s humoral theory, diseases were understood as entities in the body, not separate like it is comprehended today (Darnton). In the humoral theory Hippocrates also defines disease and pain as the bodily imbalance of four humors or liquids (“Humors”). The four humors, according to Hippocrates, were blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile (New Standard Encyclopedia 244). Robert Darnton says “The human body was thought to contain a mix of the four humors” (Darnton). Hippocrates also believed that the four humors derived from four glandular secretions the heart and liver for blood, the brain for phlegm, the spleen for black bile, and the gall bladder for yellow bile.

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...on’s humoral imbalance (Darnton). Whenever a person was on a treatment for humoral imbalance it was always important to record the patients’ medical histories (Pickover 40). The humoral theory and these practices were used by doctors and was one of the central principles in Western Medicine from antiquity through the nineteenth century until it was discredited in the early nineteenth century (Darnton).

Works Cited

Darnton, Robet. "Humoral Theory." n.d. http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu/contagion/humoral theory. web. 18 February 2014.

Francko, David. The World Book Millenium. World Book Encyclopedia, n.d. print.

“Humors”. World of Health. Gale, 2007. Student Resources in Context. Web. 17 February. 2014.

New Standard Encyclopedia. Chicago: Ferguson Publication. , 2000. Print

Pickover, Clifford. The Medical Book. Sterling Publishing Company, 2012. Print.

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