Hippocrates

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We know few about Hippocrates. He was a Greek physician who lived in the island of Cos (present-day Turkey), from approximately 460 BCE to 370 BCE. He has been called ‘the father of medicine’; He offered explanation within naturalist terms of the origins of the so-called sacred diseases. He established the first school and taught his students practice of medicine.

As historians suggest, the Hippocratic Corpus, a collection of over 60 works that is considered as the oldest writings in medicine, was not from his hand only, because it contains inconsistency and different points of view. These ‘Hippocratic’ writings covered a wide range of aspects of medicine, including surgeries, diagnostics and therapeutics.

It was the theory that Hippocrates developed to understand medicine. There were four humours: Yellow bile, black bile, blood and phlegm. Each humour was associated with a particular element (fire, water, air, earth) and two qualities (from hot, cold, wet, dry). The properties of these humours are offered a paralleled reading of the course of diseases, and of the stages of the individual life cycle. According to this ancient theory, staying healthy is closely associated with the balance of the four humours. What this meant was that he believed the imbalance of the humours has resulted in the occurrence of diseases.

Yellow bile: Fire, hot, dry. It is related to fire, summer, gallbladder and childhood.

Black bile: Earth, cold, dry. It is related to earth, winter, the spleen and old age.

Blood: Air, hot, wet. It is related to air, spring, the heart and adolescence.

Phlegm: Water, cold, wet. It is related to water, autumn, the brain and maturity.

The Hippocratic cause of epilepsy was blockage within the brain and hence regular expulsion of phlegm stopped. This led to the malfunctioning of the brain and caused the seizures. The implied message was that the Hippocratic author located consciousness and other functions to the brain.

It is one of the oldest binding documents. It mentioned the appropriate behaviour that doctors should have. One of them is still a source of inspiration to doctors today: I will use my power to help the sick to the best of my ability and judgement; I will abstain from harming or wrongdoing any man by it.

It is still taken by medical students when they graduate at several institutions. David Warriner, a clinical fellow at the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, regards the oath as “a moral compass.”

“It helps you with circumstances you face where you’re not sure what to do,” he says. “It also gives you a sense of pride and purpose in terms of the wider scope of medical practice and the importance of putting patients at the heart of decisions you make, which we can forget sometimes.”

“It reminds you why you’re doing medicine, what you should be doing every day, and when dealing with work pressures it acts as a safety valve and mitigates risk should you feel you are going against your oath,” says Sue Bailey, chair of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges.

On the other side, some parts of the oath may not fit the current scenarios, as medicine is constantly changing. “While the oath is still relevant, we need to respect how things might change,” Sue Bailey says. “So it would be interesting to think about what the Hippocratic oath will look like in a hundred years’ time, and whether its basic principles will stand the test of time.”

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