Hippocrates Of Kos Essay

Hippocrates of Kos Hippocrates of Kos, who lived sometime between 450 and 380 B.C.E., was a physician and pioneer in medical philosophy (1). Born in Kos, Greece, Hippocrates developed methodologies and procedures for the treatment of patients, along with various ideologies regarding ethics in medical practices (1, 2). He was among the first to consider that therapeutic actions should be based on rational observations and deductions rather than religious beliefs (2). By creating a concrete foundation for study in the medical field, Hippocrates established himself as an influential character in the history of medical science (1, 2). Hippocrates believed in the emerging idea that nature was composed of four elements—water, wind, earth, and fire (2). Correspondingly, Hippocrates founded his methods on the belief that a person’s health was dependent upon the balance of four fluids called humors—blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile (1, 2, 3). When a person’s humors were out of balance, disease occurred (1, 2). In order to restore balance to a diseased individual, a physician had to correct the imbalances in the patient’s humors by means of bloodletting, purgatives, and so on (1, 2). …show more content…
The Hippocratic Oath, although having emerged a century after Hippocrates himself, encapsulates the moralistic virtues Hippocrates believed all physicians should follow (1, 2, 4). Some of those virtues included a physician holding a teacher as equal to a parent, helping a patient without intent to do harm, refusing to administer a harmful drug to a patient or to suggest such an action, refraining from performing surgery, concerning himself only with the well-being of a patient, and keeping confidential the details of the patient (2, 4). Aside from instituting a guideline for physician practices, the Hippocratic Oath set a standard for codes of conduct that is followed even today (1,