For many centuries in ancient history, people believed illnesses were handed down by the gods. In the fifth century BCE, a Greek physician named Hippocrates changed that attitude. He began looking for natural causes of illnesses. Many of his treatment methods seem primitive. For example, he performed brain surgery by drilling into a patient s skull with a sharp piece of wood. There were no anesthetics. It was a very painful procedure. >In other ways his methods have held up surprisingly well. Like modern doctors, Hippocrates emphasized the value of a good diet and plenty of exercise. He also used maggots, leeches, and bees to treat his patients. All three of these creatures are still being used by doctors even in the United States. >Because of his efforts, today Hippocrates is known as the Father of Medicine.

First published in 1963, this book by University of Missouri Microbiology Professor Herbert S. Goldberg provides the reader with a picture of the life and times of Hippocrates, the “Father of Medicine.” Hippocrates was born on the island of Cos in 460 B.C., and his works remained for centuries the foundation of medical and biographical knowledge. In addition, it was Hippocrates daring approach to the problems of sickness and disease that drove the opening wedge into the wall of fear that surrounded human ills. Hippocrates scrupulous attention to professional ethics is honored even to this day by the medical oath that bears his name—The Hippocratic Oath. Goldberg accurately describes the professions and trades during Hippocrates time, as well as the early education of youth in ancient Greece. Medicines were not based on science, but on driving evil spirits from the body. Hippocrates scientific approach to the study and treatment of disease has deservedly earned for him the title of “Father of Medicine.”

An exploration of medical discoveries-from the ancient Greeks to the present "Always help, or at least do no harm." Following this simple yet revolutionary idea, Hippocrates laid the foundation for modern medicine over two millennia ago. From the Hippocratic Oath to the human genome, from Pasteur's germ theory to the worldwide eradication of smallpox, Medical Firsts brings to life 2,500 years of medical advances and discoveries. Organized chronologically, the book describes each milestone in a vivid capsule history, making it a fascinating and wonderfully readable resource for anyone interested in medicine's past progress and future promise. Robert E. Adler, PhD (Santa Rosa, CA) has worked as a psychologist and science journalist. He writes about a wide variety of scientific and medical topics for New Scientist, Nature, and other publications and is the author of Science Firsts (0-471-40174-9).

Hippocrates, considered for more than two thousand years the father of medicine, came over time to be credited with a life of mythic proportions and an enormous body of work. Hippocrates' pronouncements on health, disease, and prognosis went unchallenged in the Western world until scientific advances in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries made many of his ideas obsolete. And yet medical students in the United States and Europe still recite the Hippocratic oath upon completion of their studies. In view of Hippocrates' exceptional importance in the history of medicine, it may seem surprising that our knowledge of this fifth century b.c. Greek physician should be so incomplete. Nonetheless, Jacques Jouanna contends that a great deal can be concluded about the life and works of Hippocrates. Published to both critical and popular acclaim in France, Hippocrates reveals a man who was not only the greatest of the ancient physicians but also a philosopher of unrecognized ability and consequence who influenced both Plato and Aristotle; a historian who was the equal of Herodotus and Thucydides as a writer and superior to them in his powers of observation and analysis; and a master of tragical narrative who bears comparison with Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. Now that Hippocrates has at last emerged from the hagiographic mists of Byzantium and medieval Europe, the justice of his reputation as one of the greatest figures of antiquity can be more fully appreciated.

Traces the history of western medicine through the lives of its major contributors, profiling such well-known figures as Hippocrates and Louis Pasteur, as well as lesser-known scientists including Elle Metchnikoff and Samuel Hahnemann.

This volume makes available in English translation a selection of Jacques Jouanna's papers on Greek and Roman medicine, ranging from the early beginnings of Greek medicine to late antiquity.

A preeminent classics scholar revises the history of medicine. Medical thinking and observation were radically changed by the ancient Greeks, one of their great legacies to the world. In the fifth century BCE, a Greek doctor put forward his clinical observations of individual men, women, and children in a collection of case histories known as the Epidemics. Among his working principles was the famous maxim "Do no harm." In The Invention of Medicine, acclaimed historian Robin Lane Fox puts these remarkable works in a wider context and upends our understanding of medical history by establishing that they were written much earlier than previously thought. Lane Fox endorses the ancient Greeks' view that their texts' author, not named, was none other than the father of medicine, the great Hippocrates himself. Lane Fox's argument changes our sense of the development of scientific and rational thinking in Western culture, and he explores the consequences for Greek artists, dramatists and the first writers of history. Hippocrates emerges as a key figure in the crucial change from an archaic to a classical world. Elegantly written and remarkably learned, The Invention of Medicine is a groundbreaking reassessment of many aspects of Greek culture and city life.