Aelius Galenus or Claudius Galenus, often Anglicized as Galen or Galen of Pergamon, was a Greek physician, surgeon and philosopher with Roman citizenship. Considered to be one of the most accomplished of all medical researchers of antiquity, Galen influenced the development of various scientific disciplines, including anatomy, physiology, pathology, pharmacology, and neurology, as well as philosophy and logic.
Hippocrates of Kos, also known as Hippocrates II, was a Greek physician of the classical period who is considered one of the most outstanding figures in the history of medicine. He is traditionally referred to as the "Father of Medicine" in recognition of his lasting contributions to the field, such as the use of prognosis and clinical observation, the systematic categorization of diseases, or the formulation of humoral theory. The Hippocratic school of medicine revolutionized ancient Greek medicine, establishing it as a discipline distinct from other fields with which it had traditionally been associated, thus establishing medicine as a profession.
Bloodletting is the withdrawal of blood from a patient to prevent or cure illness and disease. Bloodletting, whether by a physician or by leeches, was based on an ancient system of medicine in which blood and other bodily fluids were regarded as "humours" that had to remain in proper balance to maintain health. It is claimed to have been the most common medical practice performed by surgeons from antiquity until the late 19th century, a span of over 2,000 years. In Europe, the practice continued to be relatively common until the end of the 19th century. The practice has now been abandoned by modern-style medicine for all except a few very specific medical conditions. In the overwhelming majority of cases, the historical use of bloodletting was harmful to patients.
Polybus was one of the pupils of Hippocrates, and also his son-in-law. He lived on the island of Cos in the 4th century BC. With his brothers-in-law, Thessalus and Draco, he was one of the founders of the Dogmatic school of medicine. He was sent by Hippocrates, with his fellow-pupils, during the time of the plague, to assist different cities with his medical skill. Afterwards, he remained in his native country. According to Galen, he followed implicitly the opinions and practices of Hippocrates, but the strict accuracy of this assertion has been doubted.
Humorism, the humoral theory, or humoralism, was a system of medicine detailing a supposed makeup and workings of the human body, adopted by Ancient Greek and Roman physicians and philosophers.
Medieval medicine in Western Europe was composed of a mixture of pseudoscientific ideas from antiquity. In the Early Middle Ages, following the fall of the Western Roman Empire, standard medical knowledge was based chiefly upon surviving Greek and Roman texts, preserved in monasteries and elsewhere. Medieval medicine is widely misunderstood, thought of as a uniform attitude composed of placing hopes in the church and God to heal all sicknesses, while sickness itself exists as a product of destiny, sin, and astral influences as physical causes. On the other hand, medieval medicine, especially in the second half of the medieval period, became a formal body of theoretical knowledge and was institutionalized in the universities. Medieval medicine attributed illnesses, and disease, not to sinful behaviour, but to natural causes, and sin was connected to illness only in a more general sense of the view that disease manifested in humanity as a result of its fallen state from God. Medieval medicine also recognized that illnesses spread from person to person, that certain lifestyles may cause ill health, and some people have a greater predisposition towards bad health than others.
The Hippocratic Corpus, or Hippocratic Collection, is a collection of around 60 early Ancient Greek medical works strongly associated with the physician Hippocrates and his teachings. The Hippocratic Corpus covers many diverse aspects of medicine, from Hippocrates' medical theories to what he devised to be ethical means of medical practice, to addressing various illnesses. Even though it is considered a singular corpus that represents Hippocratic medicine, they vary in content, age, style, methods, and views practiced; therefore, authorship is largely unknown. Hippocrates began Western society's development of medicine, through a delicate blending of the art of healing and scientific observations. What Hippocrates was sharing from within his collection of works was not only how to identify symptoms of disease and proper diagnostic practices, but more essentially, he was alluding to his personable form of art, "The art of true living and the art of fine medicine combined." The Hippocratic Corpus became the foundation upon which Western medical practice was built.
The pulmonary circulation is a division of the circulatory system in all vertebrates. The circuit begins with deoxygenated blood returned from the body to the right atrium of the heart where it is pumped out from the right ventricle to the lungs. In the lungs the blood is oxygenated and returned to the left atrium to complete the circuit.
The treatise On Ancient Medicine is perhaps the most intriguing and compelling work of the Hippocratic Corpus. The Corpus itself is a collection of about sixty writings covering all areas of medical thought and practice. Traditionally associated with Hippocrates, the father of Western medicine, philological evidence now suggests that it was written over a period of several centuries and stylistically seems to indicate that it was the product of many authors dating from about 450–400 B.C.
In the history of medicine, "Islamic medicine" is the science of medicine developed in the Middle East, and usually written in Arabic, the lingua franca of Islamic civilization.
Female hysteria was once a common medical diagnosis for women, which was described as exhibiting a wide array of symptoms, including anxiety, shortness of breath, fainting, nervousness, sexual desire, insomnia, fluid retention, heaviness in the abdomen, irritability, loss of appetite for food or sex, (paradoxically) sexually forward behaviour, and a "tendency to cause trouble for others". It is no longer recognized by medical authorities as a medical disorder. Its diagnosis and treatment were routine for hundreds of years in Western Europe.
Praxagoras was a figure of medicine in ancient Greece. He was born on the Greek island of Kos in about 340 BC. Both his father, Nicarchus, and his grandfather were physicians. Very little is known of Praxagoras' personal life, and none of his writings have survived.
Hypochromic anemia is a generic term for any type of anemia in which the red blood cells are paler than normal. A normal red blood cell has a biconcave disk shape and will have an area of pallor in its center when viewed microscopically. In hypochromic cells, this area of central pallor is increased. This decrease in redness is due to a disproportionate reduction of red cell hemoglobin in proportion to the volume of the cell. Clinically the color can be evaluated by the mean corpuscular hemoglobin (MCH) or mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration (MCHC). The MCHC is considered the better parameter of the two as it adjusts for effect the size of the cell has on its amount of hemoglobin. Hypochromia is clinically defined as below the normal MCH reference range of 27–33 picograms/cell in adults or below the normal MCHC reference range of 33–36 g/dL in adults.
Ancient Greek medicine was a compilation of theories and practices that were constantly expanding through new ideologies and trials. Many components were considered in ancient Greek medicine, intertwining the spiritual with the physical. Specifically, the ancient Greeks believed health was affected by the humors, geographic location, social class, diet, trauma, beliefs, and mindset. Early on the ancient Greeks believed that illnesses were "divine punishments" and that healing was a "gift from the Gods". As trials continued wherein theories were tested against symptoms and results, the pure spiritual beliefs regarding "punishments" and "gifts" were replaced with a foundation based in the physical, i.e., cause and effect.
The Dogmatic school of medicine was a school of medicine in ancient Greece and Rome. They were the oldest of the medical sects of antiquity. They derived their name from dogma, a philosophical tenet or opinion, because they professed to follow the opinions of Hippocrates, hence they were sometimes called Hippocratici. Thessalus, the son, and Polybus, the son-in-law of Hippocrates, were the founders of this sect, c. 400 BC, which enjoyed great reputation, and held undisputed sway over the whole medical profession, until the establishment of the Empiric school. After the rise of Empiric school, for some centuries, every physician counted himself under either one or the other of the two parties. The most distinguished among this school were Diocles of Carystus, Praxagoras of Cos, and Plistonicus. The doctrines of this school are described by Aulus Cornelius Celsus in the introduction to his De Medicina.
The history of medical diagnosis began in earnest from the days of Imhotep in ancient Egypt and Hippocrates in ancient Greece but is far from perfect despite the enormous bounty of information made available by medical research including the sequencing of the human genome. The practice of diagnosis continues to be dominated by theories set down in the early 20th century.
On the Nature of Man is a work in the Hippocratic Corpus. On the Nature of Man is attributed to Polybus, the son in law and disciple of Hippocrates, through a testimony from Aristotle's History of Animals.However, as with the many other works of the Hippocratic Corpus, the authorship is regarded as dubious in origin.
Modern understanding of disease is very different from the way it was understood in ancient Greece and Rome. The way modern physicians approach healing of the sick differs greatly from the methods used by early general healers or elite physicians like Hippocrates or Galen. In modern medicine, the understanding of disease stems from the "germ theory of disease", a concept that emerged in the second half of the 19th century, such that a disease is the result of an invasion of a micro-organism into a living host. Therefore, when a person becomes ill, modern treatments "target" the specific pathogen or bacterium in order to "beat" or "kill" the disease.
The search for a hypothetical soul and its location have been a subject of much speculation throughout history. First written proof from history about soul is available in the 'Geeta' holy book in Hinduism which contains 18 chapter based on life cycle and duty of life for human beings. The Geeta chapters and sloka were explained by hindu god Shri 'Krishna' to pandav 'Arjuna' when Arjuna was unable to perform his religious duties in the 'Kurukshetra' Mahabharat war which was happened around 3000 years before. In Hinduism as per Veda also human life cycle described before 10000 years ago. In early medicine and anatomy, the location of the soul was hypothesized to be located within the body. Aristotle and Plato understood the soul as a corporeal form but closely related to the physical world. The Hippocratic Corpus chronicles the evolution of thought that the soul is located within the body and is manifested in diseased conditions. Later, Galen explicitly used Plato's description of the corporeal soul to physical locations in the body. The logical (λογιστικός) in the brain, the spirited (θυμοειδές) in the heart, and the appetitive (ἐπιθυμητικόν) in the liver. Da Vinci had a similar approach to Galen, locating the soul, or ssenso comune, as well as the imprensiva (intellect) and memoria (memory) in different ventricles of the brain. Today neuroscientists and other fields of science that deal with the body and the mind, such as psychology, bridge the gap between what is physical and what is corporeal.
The Alexandria School of Medicine is one of the oldest empirical educational institutions in the history of medicine initiated during the Hellenistic period in the city of Alexandria. At one historical juncture, in Egypt, they united all the different medical doctrines that originated in the East and in Alexandria, and merged into one universal "critical mass of knowledge" the Alexandrian empirical school. As the Alexandria School grows more developed Medical Schools in Knossos and in Knidos over time lost their meaning and significance.
