Modern medicine has a lot to thank the Ancient Greeks for: from ideas of “do no harm” to learning through observation, a lot of the medical concepts that are in practice today were thought up by the Greeks.
Before the time of Hippocrates, it was thought the gods played a huge role in deciding someone’s health and that not honouring the right god in the right way was the cause of any ailments. Hippocrates introduced the idea that medicine should be studied as a scientific discipline. He theorised diseases would have natural causes and emphasised the need for people to be in harmony with their natural environment and their social environment. Though this may initially sound wishy-washy, being in a natural environment that suits an individual is important when considering carcinogens and so on and being in harmony with your social environment is significant in reducing stress which is a key cause in many disorders.
Furthermore, Hippocrates took on a far more holistic approach to medicine, stressing the connection between the body and the mind, suggesting that for one to perform at its best the other had to also. This has been confirmed by modern medicine through studies showing that those whose body BMI were higher than expected for their age and sex performed less satisfactorily in academic tests than students with a healthier BMI. This also caused a shift towards preventative medicine where the focus was on having patients lead healthy lifestyles in an attempt to reduce the chance a patient would develop a condition.
On top of changing what people thought caused disease, Hippocrates revolutionised the clinical methods used by doctors. Hippocratic physicians would complete case histories on patients and use these to determine the most likely cause of the patient’s illness. Patients would undergo a physical exam which focused on: paralysis and color of the limbs, pain on palpation (the process of using one's hands to check the body), vomit, stool, urine, paralysis and sputum (mucus coughed up from the lower airways). Furthermore, sleep duration, mood swings, dreams, nausea, appetite, thirst, location and severity of pain, coughing, chills, sneezing, belching, flatulence, convulsions, nosebleeds and menstrual changes were recorded. Physicians were told to note climate, gender, age habits and diet to help come to a diagnosis of the disease. The physician would take an overall assessment of the recorded symptoms and use this to determine the most suitable treatment. To summarise, a Hippocratic physician would examine patients, observe symptoms, make a diagnosis and then treat the patient. This approach is still used by medics today.
Whilst also changing clinical methods, Hippocrates also changed the standards healthcare professionals were held to. The Hippocratic Oath required new doctors to agree to stick to a number of professional and ethical standards. A translation of the Hippocratic Oath states “I will do no harm or injustice to them”, referencing how a doctor was meant to care for their patients and not cause the patient any harm. In addition, another section of the oath translates to “whatever I see or hear in the lives of my patients, whether in connection with my professional practice or not, which ought not to be spoken of outside, I will keep secret, as considering all such things to be private”. This is a clear precursor to the patient confidentiality laws that are now seen today. The final line of the oath highlights that if the oath is broken, the doctor will lose their job - this is still used in modern medicine where certain mistakes can cost a doctor their licence.
However, Hippocrates wasn’t the only Ancient Greek shaping the future of medicine. Asclepiades of Bithynia was also having a great influence as well. Asclepiades challenged Hippocrates' idea of the four humours (the idea that four fluids: black bile, yellow bile, blood and phlegm should be in balance for ideal health). Asclepiades thought the human body was made of tiny particles (what we’d call atoms and molecules). He believed that to be in good health, the particles in someone’s body should be able to pass around freely through pores while an ill person would be due to the particles being blocked from passing through pores. Although this has since been disproven, he was still one of the main proponents of molecular medicine which has proven to be very important for modern medicine (DNA is an example of the importance of molecular medicine).
Asclepiades’ influence doesn’t just end there however. He also had far more progressive views on patient care and mental illnesses. For example, he proposed that people with mental illnesses shouldn't be placed in confinement but instead should be treated by improving their lifestyle and due to his belief that there was a natural cause for the patient’s mental disorder (instead of the disorder being a punishment from the gods) he believed it would be wrong to judge the patient and argued that physicians should treat patients with compassion. He is thought to have said a physician should act ‘safely, swiftly and pleasantly’ (‘cito, tutu, jucunde’). This was a shift to more patient-centred care where the priority was the wellbeing of the patient above all else - a core tenet of modern medicine.
In all, we owe to the Ancient Greeks many of the ethical, professional and clinical standards we see in doctor’s offices around the world today.
References
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Yapijakis C. Hippocrates of Kos, the Father of Clinical Medicine, and Asclepiades of Bithynia, the Father of Molecular Medicine. In Vivo [Internet]. 2009 Jul 1;23(4):507–14. Available from: https://iv.iiarjournals.org/content/23/4/507
Britannica. History of medicine - Hellenistic and Roman medicine | Britannica. In: Encyclopædia Britannica [Internet]. 2020. Available from: https://www.britannica.com/science/history-of-medicine/Hellenistic-and-Roman-medicine
Brady FA, Kelly BD. Greek physician Asclepiades of Bithynia (124-40 BC) and his contribution to thinking about mental illness and its treatment. Irish journal of psychological medicine [Internet]. 2024 Oct;1–6. Available from: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39654403/
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