Everyone is well aware of the oath that young doctors give when embarking on the path of their noble ministry. It is associated with the name of a person who went down in history as the “father of medicine”. And although the era of his life has been separated from us for many centuries, the foundation of knowledge and the ethical foundations of the doctor’s profession, which became his legacy, forever entered his name in the history of civilization. This man's name was Hippocrates. A brief biography and the history of his life will be the topic of our conversation.
A life story written five centuries later
For a long time, researchers around the world tried bit by bit to restore the life path of the founder of modern medicine. Information about him is very limited, and therefore only approximate data contained in the biography of Hippocrates. The main dates of his life and death are known only with a certain degree of accuracy. It is believed that he was born in 460 BC on the Greek island of Kos, and died in 377 BC, having lived eighty-three years.
This information is gleaned from the works of the famous Roman historian Soran of Ephesus. He compiled the first and very brief biography of Hippocrates. Without questioning the general reliability of the information cited by him, one should still bear in mind that he lived five centuries after the events described, and this could cause some inaccuracies.
The childhood and youth of the hereditary doctor
From the same source it becomes known that his father's name was Heraclides, and he was also engaged in medicine. The name of the mother is indicated as Fenareth, but other sources claim that her name was Praxitea. It is not possible to establish the truth in this matter, especially since Hippocrates himself does not speak of parents anywhere in his writings. A brief biography, which has already been mentioned, tells about his two sons - Fesall and Draconte, who followed in the footsteps of his father and became doctors. The biographer writes that their respect for their father was so great that each of them later named his own son by his name.
Mastering the basics of science
Soran of Ephesus reports that Hippocrates received his initial medical education in his homeland, in the temple dedicated to Asclepius, the god of medicine. Such temples were in most large cities of the Greek world and were called Asclepius. His first mentors were father and grandfather - both hereditary doctors who enjoyed popular fame. With the aim of wider scientific improvement and the acquisition of knowledge necessary for a deep and complete understanding of life processes, Hippocrates was trained by two prominent philosophers of his time - Democritus and Gorgias.
To replenish knowledge, he goes on a trip around the country. In Greece, those years, many good doctors practiced, and each of those with whom fate brought together, tried to learn something young and obsessed with a thirst for knowledge of Hippocrates. A brief history of his life, set out in the work of Soran of Ephesus, depicts the future great doctor, absorbed in his studies and carefully studying the anatomical tables on the walls of the numerous temples of Asclepius.
Mentioning him in the works of great contemporaries
Researchers also have a mention of Hippocrates of one of his famous compatriots - a philosopher and thinker of the late 5th century BC Plato. In his treatise called Protagoras, he writes of him as his great contemporary, practicing and leading the training of young doctors. Since the time of writing the treatise is known quite accurately, this is an indirect confirmation of the information on the period of the life of Hippocrates indicated by Soran of Ephesus. In his writings, his other famous compatriot, Aristotle, talks about him. It is enough to recall his famous treatise Politics.
Greek travels
Although the island of Kos, as has already been said, is considered to be the island of Kos, from the works of Hippocrates himself it is known that he practiced mainly in other parts of the Greek world. One of the ancient sources informs us that he was forced to leave his homeland due to some strange and dark history. It refers to the arson in which Hippocrates was allegedly accused. It is not possible to confirm the reliability of this fact or to refute it due to the absence of any additional data, except for this, in general, dubious statement.
But one way or another, he leaves Kos and travels, lingering for a long time on another Greek island - Thassos, and in the nearest coastal city - Abdera. Often referred to as his place of residence and the island of Kizik, located in the Sea of Marmara. This information is cited in his treatise The Epidemic by Hippocrates himself. His short biography, over which many historians of the following centuries worked, was largely created on the basis of information from his own works. Its brevity is due to the limited materials available to researchers.
Collection of scientific works - the legacy of a scientist
It should be noted one more mention of Hippocrates, known to us from another composition of Plato, which he called "Federa". In it, he writes that the great healer believed that a good theory in medicine is much more important than empirical observations based on sensory perception. However, such a point of view contradicts certain theses from the works of Hippocrates himself.
Information about the "father of medicine", preserved in the writings of Plato and Aristotle, is valuable because all subsequent authors did not write about Hippocrates himself, but about his scientific heritage, which gained fame during their lifetime. It was unusually large. He outlined the fruits of his research in separate works, which, along with the works of other authors, compiled the so-called Hippocrates collection. Studying them, scientists come to the conclusion that many of them are parts of a once large single work.
The fruits of the scientific thought of the ancient world
This collection also contains the works of ancient scholars, whose names for the most part have not survived to this day. There is reason to consider this abundance of medical work as the remnants of a library that once belonged to Hippocrates and was partially lost. In confirmation of this, the fact that these works are very different from each other in the topics of the research presented in them and, most importantly, in the level of scientific thought, confirms this. Some skeptics are even inclined to question the existence of works, the authorship of which belongs personally to Hippocrates.
The greatest humanist of the past
Among the scientific discoveries that belong to Hippocrates, one should single out the doctrine of human temperament, the theory of the staged course of the disease, developments related to the methods of examining patients, as well as his contribution to surgery and dietetics. Only after many centuries, people were able to fully appreciate how much the scientist’s thought was ahead of the era in which he lived.
In addition to outstanding medical discoveries, the name of Hippocrates is forever associated with concepts about the high ethical and moral character of a doctor. This is formulated in the famous Hippocratic oath, with which begins the independent service to the people of each doctor. Over the centuries, its text has undergone several revisions, but the fundamental principles, in which high humanism and humanity are laid, have remained unchanged. The pronouncement of this oath upon receipt of a diploma has become a tradition in many countries of the world.
Fiction Biography
Hippocrates is one of those whose life has become a legend. The reason for this is the scientist’s victorious time, and the era in which he happened to live. In ancient Greece, it was a tradition to attribute to the most prominent fellow citizens a kinship with the gods - the inhabitants of Olympus. Hippocrates also received this honor. A brief biography, composed by his followers and admirers, indicated that he belonged to the most ancient family of Asklepiads, a dynasty of doctors originating from the god of medicine Asclepius. It is quite clear that such a relationship fully determined his purpose in this life and gave greater authority to the doctrine he developed.
A biography of Hippocrates written by Soran of Ephesus, a brief summary of which has become the property of many generations of his admirers, is replete with episodes whose reliability from a historical point of view is not entirely convincing. Among them there are moments similar in their plot and in many details to the biography of another famous doctor - the Persian Avicenna.
Legends that have become part of the biography
One such story tells of how Hippocrates, after conducting a series of events, stopped the plague epidemic raging in Athens. The other tells about the healing of the king of Macedonia, in whom he diagnosed aggravation - a condition in which the patient, by virtue of his suspiciousness, exaggerates the painful state. Both of these episodes are present in the medieval treatise on Avicenna. It must be admitted that Hippocrates himself, a brief biography and his discoveries, for various reasons, have become the objects of numerous speculation.
Historians also doubt the information about his refusal to become the personal physician of the king of the powerful Achaemenid empire, created in the VI-IV centuries BC in Asia. The legend about how the inhabitants of Abdera invited Hippocrates to testify to the crazy thinker Democritus, who constantly burst into laughter for no apparent reason, is also widely known. Having carried out one of the first psychiatric examinations in the history, the doctor established his full sanity. The laughter of the philosopher was caused by human affairs, insignificant, in his opinion, against the backdrop of world harmony. The list of such episodes could be continued for a very long time.
Having lived to a very old age, Hippocrates devoted his whole life to science. As a medical practitioner, he was widely known in Thessaly, Thrace, Macedonia. About his death with full certainty we only know that he died in the city of Larisa, one of the centers of Thessaly. The exact date of death has not been established, and the data cited in the already mentioned biography, compiled five hundred years later by the Roman historian, are doubtful. It is believed that his life expectancy ranged from about 83 to 104 years.
Antique heritage in the life of modern man
Despite the centuries-old period that separates us from the era in which the ingenious Greek lived and worked, interest in his personality and scientific discoveries does not wane. The biography of Hippocrates, the main dates and events of his life are included in the curriculum of many universities. It is difficult to overestimate the contribution made by him to world science. At the turn of the 5th and 4th centuries BC, he laid the foundations that determined the main directions for the development of future medicine.
Today, many works devoted to this interesting topic are being published. Among them are his works in the translation of V. I. Rudnev, and “Aphorisms”, released in 1994, and a brief biography of Hippocrates in English, which went abroad. All new products simply can not be listed.
It is gratifying that interest in his legacy is observed not only among people who, by the nature of their activity, are associated with medicine and for whom the name Hippocrates is sacred. A brief biography, a photo of his sculptural image, and even many of the provisions of the scientific works of the ancient scientist today are known to the widest public.