Ancient Greek Medicine

Medicinal study was very significant to the Ancient Greek. Ancient Greek Culture of medicine was such that a high priority was placed upon healthy lifestyles, this despite Ancient Greece being much different to the Greece of the modern World. Ancient Greece and its people were much different to the Greece of today. In Ancient times Greece was large a collection of City States. Each of these cities was independent from the others but shared a similar social culture and religious beliefs. Despite the lack of a coherent government the Greek people developed a society that matched, if not bettered, that of the Ancient Egyptians.

Medicinal practice like Egypt, in Ancient Greece, was based largely upon religious beliefs. The Cult of Asclepios rapidly grew in popularity and was a major provider of medical care. This cult in Ancient Greek developed old theories and introduced several treatments not too dissimilar from modern 'alternative medicines'. However, the Ancient Greek made major strides in medicinal knowledge. The studies and works of Hippocrates and his followers led to several scientific facts being recorded for the first time: and perhaps more significantly the work of these philosophers began a tradition of studying the cause of disease rather than looking solely at the symptoms when prescribing a cure.

The legacy of the Ancient Greek world on their outstanding medical practice has been great. The theory of Four Humours of Hippocrates was, for a long time, the basis upon which to develop medical reasoning. Likewise the medical methodology employed by the Greeks has, to a large extent, been retained and modified to form what we now consider to be conventional medicine. Disease of different types was a very serious problem for the Greeks, as for all other people in the ancient and medieval worlds. One out of three Greek babies died before they were a year old also around half of all Greek children died before they were ten and even most of the Ancient Greek people who grew up died in their forties and fifties.

So the Ancient Greeks were very interested in using scientific and medical observation and logic to figure out what caused diseases and what people could do about them. Later on during the Hellenistic period in the 300's BC and afterward, Greek doctors worked out a logical system for understanding disease. Their research and writings about this have been collected in the Hippocratic Writings, named after the first and most famous of these doctors, Hippocrates.

This logical system in the Ancient Greece began with the idea of humors. The ancient doctors believed that people were made out of four substances like blood, black bile, yellow bile, and phlegm (pronounced FLEM) or boogers. If people were healthy, that was because of their four humors were balanced and have the right amount of each one. But if people had too much of one humor, they would be unbalanced and they would feel ill. For example, if some one had too much blood, that would give him or her fever. So their medical treatment should be to reduce the amount of blood in their body. Greek doctors did this by cutting the arm until blood ran out. This was supposed to help bring down the fever.

• John Palsson
• 15/02/2009, 2:59 PM
• 0 Comments