Greek Medicine History

It is an uncontested fact that medicine has evolved drastically. Practices that were once commonplace in the 8th century have henceforth been modified to fit the current standards of society today. Early medical traditions and treatments have been seen in Babylon, China, Egypt and India. It was the Greeks who had gone even further with medical technology, introducing a number of concepts, such as the medical diagnosis, prognosis and advanced medical ethics. Medieval beliefs and ideas about medicine had been based off of the work of two Greek physicians Galen, and Hippocrates (Bovey). Whereas Hippocrates had laid the foundation of Greek Medicine, it was Galen who had further developed its theory and practice. It was Galen who put forward the theory that a patient’s ailment was caused by an imbalance of the four humors: blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile (Bovey). The Arabs, in the Golden Age, had then set forth to improve upon the medical field and introduce a number of technologies and practices that are still used to this day. As medical technologies and the understanding of the human body grew, economies, and over all health and lifespans also grew. With the improvement of medical technology, saw the improvement of …show more content…
Egyptian Imhotep (2667-2648) was the first physician known by name. The earliest surgery in Egypt was performed around 2750 BCE Egyptian medical practice was highly advanced for its time, containing things such as non-invasive surgery, setting of bones, dentistry and an extensive set of pharmacopoeia, a book that contains directions for the identification of compound medicine. (Breasted). Herodotus, a Greek historian, described the Egyptians as the “healthiest of all men, next to the Libyans” (Herodotus). It is to be noted, however, that Egyptian medicine had, to a good extent, dealt primarily with the supernatural, as most ancient civilizations did