Healers
Hippocrates
Physician
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Hippocrates of Kos was an ancient Greek physician traditionally called the father of Western medicine. The body of work attributed to him and his school, the Hippocratic Corpus, treats disease as a natural process to be observed and reasoned about rather than a matter of divine punishment, and its clinical case histories, surgical treatises and the ethical Hippocratic Oath associated with his name shaped medical practice for over two thousand years. This atlas records what the historical record supports and is not medical advice.
Facts
Disputed
Birth YearTraditionally dated to about 460 BC, but ancient biographical sources disagree and no contemporary record fixes the year precisely. Death YearTraditionally dated to about 370 BC, on the same uncertain ancient biographical basis as his birth year. Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Bloodletting, Treatments Hippocratic writings document bloodletting as established medical practice, grounded in humoral theory.
Specialist In
His treatise Airs, Waters, and Places, correlating disease with environment and season, is widely cited as a foundational text for epidemiological thinking.
Hippocratic treatises including On Fractures and On the Articulations are among the earliest systematic surgical texts.
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