Walking with the Ancient Ones

Following are Hippocrates unique views on understanding God and the universe:

Hippocrates emphasized that we humans did not have the mental compacity to understand God, we probably needed a completely new way of thinking.

We might have to believe that this is possible that something exist without a beginning or end.

The very word existance might be foreign to God.

It is possible that something could be without a purpose. It is possible that understanding itself does not exist with God.

We humans can’t possibly understand God within these limits.

But all is not hopeless, it isn’t that God wanted his ways in doing things in secret for he has given us a way to what we call understanding. That way is this:

It is through love. Love is one thing that God and humans have in common. But it is not a love that you experience just in poetry and romance. Hippocrates says it is a love that has to be researched and studied as if it was a human element, though a element it is not.

Finally God gives those who would find such research and study dffficult he gives us faith. Hippocrates concludes by saying that if we had faith in love we may indeed understand God and the

This weekends blog post will be who the Hell was Hippocrates and what the heck did he know: Our bodies rely upon proper enzymes and healthy microbes …. to work with pathogenic bacteria and to produce anti-bacterial cultures in order to strengthen the intestinal walls and to support our immune system.

Today we are challenged on many fronts: lifestyle and diet, , stress, toxic chemicals in our food/water/environment, deficientintestinal flora, consumption of alcohol, and frequent use of antibiotics all deplete our healthy supply of beneficial enzymes and bacteria. This allows disease to take hold beginning with yeast strains. Supplementing with friendly bacteria help keep harmful bacteria from multiplying in our intestines

Greek Medicine: Hippocrates

Greek Medicine.net: Gives information and guidance on the theory and practice of Greek Medicine and Medical Astrology as a traditional system of natural healing.

Hippocrates of Kos (460-377 Before Common Era, BCE) is universally recognized as the father of modern medicine, which is based on observation of clinical signs and rational conclusions, and does not rely on religious or magical beliefs. Hippocratic medicine was influenced by the Pythagorean theory that Nature was made of four elements (water, earth, wind and fire), and therefore, in an analogous way, the body consisted of four fluids or ‘humors’ (black bile, yellow bile, phlegm and blood).

The physician had to reinstate the healthy balance of these humors by facilitating the healing work of ‘benevolent Nature’. The Hippocratic Oath contains the Pythagorean duties of justice, secrecy, respect for teachers and solidarity with peers. The clinical and ethical basics of medical practice as well as most clinical terms used even today have their origins in Hippocrates. His contribution in clinical medicine is immense.

Asclepiades of Bithynia (124-40 BCE) was the first physician who established Greek medicine in Rome. Influenced by the Epicurean philosophy, he adhered to atomic theory, chance and evolution, and did not accept the theory of a ‘benevolent Nature’.

He suggested that the human body is composed of molecules and void spaces, and that diseases are caused by alteration of form or position of a patient’s molecules. Asclepiades favored naturalistic therapeutic methods such as a healthy diet, massage and physical exercise. Above all, he introduced the friendly, sympathetic, pleasing and painless treatment of patients into medical practice, influenced by the teachings of Epicurus on pleasure and friendship.’

He was the first who made the highly important division of diseases into acute and chronic ones and to perform an elective non-emergency tracheotomy. As the founder of the Methodic School, Asclepiades was the first known physician who spoke about what is known today as molecular medicine.

Life and works

It is known that while Hippocrates was alive, he was admired as a physician and teacher. His younger contemporary Plato referred to him twice. In the Protagoras Plato called Hippocrates “the Asclepiad of Cos” who taught students for fees, and he implied that Hippocrates was as well known as a physician as Polyclitus and Phidias were as sculptors. It is now widely accepted that an “Asclepiad” was not a temple priest or a member of a physicians’ guild but instead was a physician belonging to a family that had produced well-known physicians for generations. Plato’s second reference occurs in the Phaedrus, in which Hippocrates is referred to as a famous Asclepiad who had a philosophical approach to medicine.

Meno, a pupil of Aristotle, specifically stated in his history of medicine the views of Hippocrates on the causation of diseases, namely, that undigested residues were produced by unsuitable diet and that these residues excreted vapours, which passed into the body generally and produced diseases. Aristotle said that Hippocrates was called “the Great Physician” but that he was small in stature (Politics).

A wise man should consider that health is the greatest of human blessings, and learn how by his own thought to derive benefit from his illnesses. Hippocrates
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Read more about the history of medicine: Hippocrates

These are the only extant contemporary, or near-contemporary, references to Hippocrates. Five hundred years later, the Greek physician Soranus wrote a life of Hippocrates, but the contents of this and later lives were largely traditional or imaginative. Throughout his life Hippocrates appears to have traveled widely in Greece and Asia Minor practicing his art and teaching his pupils, and he presumably taught at the medical school at Cos quite frequently. His birth and death dates are traditional but may well be approximately accurate. Undoubtedly, Hippocrates was a historical figure, a great physician who exercised a permanent influence on the development of medicine and on the ideals and ethics of the physician.

Hippocrates’ reputation, and myths about his life and his family, began to grow in the Hellenistic period, about a century after his death. During this period, the Museum of Alexandria in Egypt collected for its library literary material from preceding periods in celebration of the past greatness of Greece. So far as it can be inferred, the medical works that remained from the Classical period (among the earliest prose writings in Greek) were assembled as a group and called the works of Hippocrates (Corpus Hippocraticum). Linguists and physicians subsequently wrote commentaries on them, and, as a result, all the virtues of the Classical medical works were eventually attributed to Hippocrates and his personality constructed from them.

The virtues of the Hippocratic writings are many, and, although they are of varying lengths and literary quality, they are all simple and direct, earnest in their desire to help, and lacking in technical jargon and elaborate argument. The works show such different views and styles that they cannot be by one person, and some were clearly written in later periods. Yet all the works of the Corpus share basic assumptions about how the body works and what disease is, providing a sense of the substance and appeal of ancient Greek medicine as practiced by Hippocrates and other physicians of his era. Prominent among these attractive works are the Epidemics, which give annual records of weather and associated diseases, along with individual case histories and records of treatment, collected from cities in northern Greece. Diagnosis and prognosis are frequent subjects.

Other treatises explain how to set fractures and treat wounds, feed and comfort patients, and take care of the body to avoid illness. Treatises called Diseases deal with serious illnesses, proceeding from the head to the feet, giving symptoms, prognoses, and treatments. There are works on diseases of women, childbirth, and pediatrics. Prescribed medications, other than foods and local salves, are generally purgatives to rid the body of the noxious substances thought to cause disease. Some works argue that medicine is indeed a science, with firm principles and methods, although explicit medical theory is very rare. The medicine depends on a mythology of how the body works and how its inner organs are connected. The myth is laboriously constructed from experience, but it must be remembered that there was neither systematic research nor dissection of human beings in Hippocrates’ time. Hence, while much of the writing seems wise and correct, there are large areas where much is unknown.

Influence

Test Your Knowledge

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Human Health: Fact or Fiction?

Technical medical science developed in the Hellenistic period and after. Surgery, pharmacy, and anatomy advanced; physiology became the subject of serious speculation; and philosophic criticism improved the logic of medical theories. Competing schools in medicine (first Empiricism and later Rationalism) claimed Hippocrates as the origin and inspiration of their doctrines.

In the 2nd century ad, the physician Galen of Pergamum developed his magnificent medical system, a synthesis of preceding work and his own additions that became the basis of European and Arabic medicine into the Renaissance. Galen was argumentative and long-winded, often abusive of contemporaries and earlier physicians, but at the same time, with exaggerated reverence that ignored five centuries of progress, he claimed that Hippocrates was the source of all that he himself knew and practiced. For later physicians, Hippocrates stood as the inspirational source, while the more difficult Galen offered the substantial details.

As time went on, reverence for the past had to contend with new notions of scientific method and new discoveries. In the process, Galen’s authority was undone, but Hippocrates’ eminence as father of medicine remained. Scientific progress in fields such as anatomy, chemistry, microbiology, and microscopy, especially beginning in the 16th and 17th centuries, demanded that Galen’s medicine be criticized and revised part by part. Arguments against Galenic medicine were often more effective when they were presented as returns to true Hippocratic medicine.

New scientific methodology argued for a return to observation and study of nature, abandoning bookish authority. The simple and direct writings of the Hippocratic Collection read well as sample empirical texts that eschewed dogma. By the late 19th century, Galen was irrelevant to medical practice, and general knowledge of Hippocratic medical writings was beginning to fade. However, today Hippocrates still continues to represent the humane, ethical aspects of the medical profession.

Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine, was a wise man. Much of his wisdom, which is now over 2000 years old, has stood the test of time. Obviously, not all disease begins in the gut. … However, there is evidence that many chronic metabolic diseases do, in fact, begin in the gut.

Does All Disease Really Begin in The Gut? The Surprising Truth

Impaired gut health may cause unwanted substances to “leak” into the bloodstream. This causes inflammation, which may be driving chronic metabolic disease.

authoritynutrition.com

Hippocrates in Five Minutes covering:
Reasons for his discoveries.
Description and explanation of his ideas.
An evaluation of his continuing significance.

GCSE history: Hippocrates in Five Minutes

Hippocrates in Five Minutes covering: Reasons for his discoveries. Description and explanation of his ideas. An evaluation of his continuing significance.

Preview YouTube video 2. Classical Views of Disease: Hippocrates, Galen, and Humoralism