The Four Humors and Their Influence Through Time Greek Antiquity was a time of some of the greatest minds of all time, such as Plato and Aristotle, leading to many inventions and ideas that are still relevant today, from hydraulics to astronomy. One of the most influential realizations, however, came from the mind of a man named Hippocrates, as he began the real start of the practice of medicine. Hippocrates of Cos, a physician in ancient Greece, is considered to be the father of medicine due to his many contributions to the field in his life. Through research and different experiments he was able to conclude many different principles, including on of the most important: the four humors. By observing reactions to different illnesses, sometimes leading the patient to die, he was able to develop the theory. His theory of the four humors was that the human body was filled with four basic substances, or humors, that when in balance indicate the person is healthy. If there was too little or too much of one of the four, a disease or disability would result. The four humors of Hippocratic medicine are black bile, yellow bile, blood, and phlegm. Before the humors were introduced, many people believed that the source of illness was punishment from the Gods. It wasn’t until after Hippocrates’ introduction to medicine that the field stepped away from religion and into science. The introduction of the four humors led to a continuing line of thought up until the nineteenth century
We find that the “oldest written sources of western medicine are The Hippocratic writings from the 5th and 4th centuries BC; which covers all aspects of medicine at that time and contain numerous medical terms.”(Wulff) This was the beginning of the Greek era of the language of medicine, which lasted even after the Roman
The Greeks made many influences to their medical practices as well as ours today. Hippocrates was one of the many doctors at the time and he made many new discoveries in medicines which really helped people live longer and made his procedures a lot easier. He was a very trustworthy doctor. He made an oath stating that he wouldn't do anything to put his patients in harm by giving them bad medicines. Instead, he swore to do everything possible to cures patients and help make them feel better. This was known as the Hippocrates Oath (Doc 4). Even to this day, doctors must swear to not do anything that can cause harm to their patients. It's part of their training while in medical school. The only time a doctor can "harm" his or her patients is when the patient signs a
The humoral view of the body and the progress it aided in medicine was greatly owed to Hippocrates and Galen. Although Galen agreed with many aspects of Hippocratic medicine, there were several more aspects that Galen practiced and believed that were different. Being that Galen used Hippocratic works as the foundation of his practice of medicine, there should be some similarities towards Hippocrates and Galen’s approaches towards humoralism. These similarities were, influences on a person’s health, preventative healthcare, and factors affecting diagnosis. Using these concepts provided by Hippocrates, Galen then builds on these with his own concepts and beliefs.
The Greeks were the first to realize that diseases were caused by reactions to certain things and could be cured by certain medicine. Before this diseases were thought of as punishments from the Gods. Also physicians developed an oath among all doctors that created systems like doctor-patient confidentiality. (Ancient History Lists). The Greeks showed us that medicine is a two-fold process. There is the need to understand disease and healing, and there is also a need to regulate the practice of medicine and the ethics involved.
Hippocrates known as the Greek physician of the age of pericles. He was referred as the father of western medicine and consider one of the most outstanding figures of the history of medicine and also founder of hippocrates school of medicine. Hippocrates establish the discipline distinct of other fields and also established the medicine as a profession. He was born C.460 BC , island of cos. Greece and died C. 375
The Importance of Hippocrates in Medicine Hippocrates was a Greek doctor. Born in Cos around 460BC, Hippocrates was the most famous of Greek doctors. He wrote medical books which have helped improve medical information and remedies. Hippocrates created the Hippocratic Oath, where doctors promised to treat patients with respect and would always try to cure them of their problems. All of Hippocrates work has helped to forward medical knowledge.
It was Hippocrates’ teachings and revolutionary techniques that were the driving force behind the shift from irrational to rational medicine in ancient Greece.
Starting soon after the achievements of Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine, in 460 BC Greek medicine and treatments began to intensely develop and improve due to anatomical research. Ancient physicians and anatomists such as Erasistratus, Herophilus, Galen, and Andreas Vesalius conducted dissections on live and dead organisms to lead them to make important discoveries about the anatomy, functionality, and overall health of humans. With passing time, each person built off of their influences work by testing validity, expanding on research, and all the meanwhile making their own discovers. However, human dissection and vivisection experiments were limited due to conflicts with ethnics and the ways of the Catholic Church. There was also the
The Roman doctor Galen contributed a lot to the medical field. He wrote a book called, “The Best Physician is also a Philosopher”. This book was used as a medical book for thousands of years after it was published. He also got a better understanding of the human anatomy than what was previously known before, specifically the circulatory, nervous, and the respiratory systems. He was discovered the difference between bright and dark blood (8).
In the Canon of Medicine, Avicenna describes 760 simple and compound drugs, their usage, and their composition, furthering elaborating on Galen’s study concerning humoral pathology. It is comprised of five parts. The first book covers the four elements known at the time (fire, water, earth, and air) as well as the basics of anatomy. The second book contains information regarding cause and symptoms of an illness. The third book covers hygienic practices health and sickness, as well as the inevitability of death. The fourth book delves into classification of illness, while the fifth describes the various types of compound drugs. The Canon of Medicine remained a reliable source to acquire medical information for centuries; in some parts of India, Unani medicine is practiced. Unani medicine is based on the works of Greek philosophers; Avicenna refined this form of Islamic medicine, and it is still implemented today, proving that Avicenna’s influence has extended until the present
Though the Greeks’ medicinal practices now seem highly superstitious and primitive, their desire and effort put towards discovering the cause of disease and working toward curing or preventing disease are worthy of respect and admiration. With a great amount of observance and, what they believed to be, a logical line of thinking, the Greeks offered those working in medicine an explanation of why diseases occurred, the effects these diseases had, how they could be countered, and even the regions they were most likely to claim victims. During the time the Hippocratic corpus was written, the Greeks did not believe there was anything divine about disease; no gods threw waves of illness at their people in fits of anger or in punishment like many cultures before and after believed. The seasons, water, air, and regions were the reason for disease and directly affected which illnesses were most common and the probability of catching a disease. This line of thinking
Hippocrates was the first medical scientist to acknowledge medicine as a branch of science rather than just an occupation. He established a theory that explained the connection between disease and factors such as diet, environment and lifestyle, rather than resorting to the supernatural dimension and divine superstition. Hippocrates recognized the impact of astrology on the human body inspiring the expanded investigation and study of astrology in this present day. Aristotle, another ancient Greek physician discovered the major elements of biology and anatomy. He specialized in the anatomy of animals especially their reproduction and lifestyle cycles.
During the Middle Ages, science was not emphasized and doctors retained many of the same beliefs held by their predecessors centuries ago. Therefore, the medicines they used were herbal and passed down from generations. Although these herbal remedies, such as wormwood and lungwort, had some merit and cured stomachaches and headaches, they were insufficient in curing the bubonic plague. Another ancient practice was bloodletting, which was common during the Greco-Roman times. The doctors of the medieval times believed that four different liquids controlled the body (1). Developed by the Greek philosopher Galen, the theory held that the body was controlled by four fluid?black bile, yellow bile, blood, and phlegm. Each fluid
Unfortunately, this theory led to "doctors" thinking that in a person there were "excesses of humor" causing drainage practices of the liquid or in question. This theory had a very great acceptance among the "scientists" since it was based on the generative cosmogonies of the Universe, or the elements: Sun (Fire), Earth, Water Air. Let's look at a list of each mood and what emotion it contained:
Humour and satire are two concepts that are both wide ranging and diverse, from dark, to light hearted, with each producing a different effect. Humour in the main, is something that is used to please the audience, its function is to invoke laughter amongst its audience. Satire is used to create a comical critical view of the subject at hand, this can range from a light hearted comical way, to a judgemental way, with each style giving the text a different meaning, however this does not mean that satire cannot be humorous, which can evident in the use of parody and irony within texts. Within literature both concepts play an important role to how the text is viewed, humour can include word play, grammatical jokes, to even inside jokes with the author and reader, and with satire, including that of irony and parody, with each style and type delivering humour in its own unique way. These differing styles of humour can be found in a variety of forms including Jasper Forde’s The Eyre Affair (2001), with its silly atmosphere, word play and grammar jokes, and the use of light hearted satire and parody to brighten up the text, and Julian Barnes A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters (1989), where there is a more serious atmosphere, with a more critical, satirical eye on history and characters, as well as using irony to achieve its comical effect, and the position of the world. Each text is humorous and satirical in its own right, and with each author using different techniques to