Hippocratic medicine
Disease is given natural causes, and doctors are given an ethic.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 90 years
- Known to
- ± 10 years
- Era
- Classical, Holocene
The texts gathered under Hippocrates' name, from around 400 BCE, argue that illness has physical causes rather than divine ones — the treatise on epilepsy insists the sacred disease is no more sacred than any other — and emphasise observation, prognosis and letting the body heal. The humoral theory they propose is wrong and persisted for two thousand years. The professional ethic, including the obligation not to harm, has proved more durable.