Limited by dis- section taboo and likely bear- ing witness to countless poi- sonings and deaths originat- ing from medical treatment, Hip- pocrates of Cos (460-377 BCE),
relied on carefully observing the disease process, espousing primum no nocere, first do no harm. He saw disease not as punishment from the gods, but a conse- quence of environmental factors, diet, and living habits. He observed that nature had an innate ability to re-balance the four humors and heal itself. Hippocratic thera- py focused on supporting the natural process, with “food as the medicine and medicine as the food”. Hippocrates devel- oped the first traction bed for the treatment of orthopædic injuries. He was the first to separate medicine from mysticism and the temple, describing a rational practice based on observation and rigorous atten- tion to detail, which included meticulous documentation of the natural course of disease, adding diagnosis and prognosis
to the art of medicine. Using the Hippo- cratic method, the physician became a servant of nature, a doctor, not a sorcerer.
Galen of Per- gamum (129 – 200 CE), a Ro- man of Greek ethnicity, was a physician, sur- geon and phi- losopher , schooled in the Greek tradition. At the age of 19
he traveled to Alexandria, the seat of higher learning at the time, to study medicine. While in Alexandria, Galen learned anatomy and physiology by dis- section and vivisection of monkeys and pigs, restrained by a Roman prohibition against human dissection. At age 28, Galen returned to Pergamum (Eastern Turkey) as physician to the gladiators of the High Priest of Asia, which advanced his knowl- edge of living human anatomy, physiology and wound healing. Interestingly, only five gladiators died in the four years of his service as opposed to sixty under the care of his predecessor. He considered the
wounds of the gladiators a “window into the body” and used the opportunity wisely.
Galen remained grounded in the Greek theory of humorism. He was a pro- lific writer, with his contributions in anatomy, physiology, pharmacology, pa- thology, neurology and philosophy influ- encing the practice of medicine for over 1300 years. He perfected and promoted the practice of venesection and bloodlet- ting, the most common practice of the medical profession until the late 19th century.
After Galen, the next major influ- ence in the prac- tice of modern Western medi- cine was a radi- cal, Renaissance/ Reformation phy- sician, botanist, alchemist and astrologer, Philip-
pus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim (1493 – 1541 CE), born in Switzerland, to a father who was both physician and chemist. He insisted on us-
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