Note 10 — NOTES.1

Hippocrates is often termed the “father of medicine.” He was born in Cos in 460 B. C. He studied medicine under his father, Heraclides, and Herodicus of Selymbria; and philosophy under Gorgias and Democritus. He was the first to separate medicine from religion and from philosophy. He insisted that diseases must be treated by the physician, as if they were governed by purely natural laws. The Greeks had such respect for dead bodies that Hippocrates could not have dissected a human body, and consequently his knowledge of its structure was limited, but he seems to have been an acute and skilful observer of conditions in the living body. He wrote several works on medicine, and in one of them showed the first principles on which the public health must be based. The details of his life are hidden by tradition, but it is certain that he was regarded with great respect and veneration by the Greeks.16