Ancient Greek Medicine

Education

In most Greek city-states it was expected that all male citizens would be able to read and write. Many developed a great love for books and ideas. This allowed knowledge to spread between city-states.

Regimen

This was the Greek word for 'lifestyle'. The Greeks believed that a good diet, rest and exercise was essential for a healthy body.

Philosophy

This is translated as 'lovers of wisdom'. Some Greek men devoted their lives to making sense of the world. They rejected the idea that you could explain what happened in nature as being the actions of the gods and instead looked for scientific reasons.

Asclepius

The Greek god of healing.

Asclepion

A healing centre in Ancient Greece. It usually had an Abaton, a gymnasium, baths, theatres and other facilities. The priests there were experienced and skilled healers.

Panacaea and Hygieia

The daughters of Asclepius.

Abaton

The main temple at an Asclepion where patients would sleep and be visited by Asclepius and his daughters. They would be miraculously cured in the morning.

Public Health in Ancient Greece

City governments left people to keep clean and prevent illnesses in their own ways. The rich could afford their own baths and lavatories but most people lived in small, dirty houses with only basins to wash in. The streets were filthy. Only one city state, Corinth, had public lavatories.

Surgery in Ancient Greece

The use of iron and steel gave doctors stronger and sharper instruments. Surgeons developed good techniques for setting broken bones and also, in extreme cases, amputations. However, very few operations were done inside the body. One exception was the draining of the lungs- performed if the patient had pneumonia.

Wine and vinegar

Used by the Ancient Greeks to wash wounds. These are natural antiseptics and would have helped wounds to heal without infection.

Alexandria

City in northern Egypt founded by Alexander the Great around 330BC. This place became a centre of medical knowledge after the Greeks built a library and university there. It was said that eventually there were more than 700,000 different items in the library.

Human dissection

This was banned in Ancient Greece, except for in Alexandria where, for a short time, it was permitted and allowed doctors to discover more about human anatomy.

Herophilus

Greek doctor who lived around 300BC. He performed careful dissections that allowed him to discover that the brain controls the body. He also showed the differences between arteries and nerves and investigated the different parts of the stomach.

Erasistratus

Greek doctor who lived around 280 BC. He dissected the human brain and began to understand that the brain sends messages to the rest of the body via the nerves. He also dissected hearts and came up with the idea that the heart was a pump, pumping air and blood around the body.

Clinical observation

The careful recording of a patient's symptoms that led Greek doctors to develop a diagnosis of the illness and a prognosis of how the illness might develop. Greek doctors wrote down case histories of every one of their patients.

The Hippocratic Oath

This was sworn by doctors who followed Hippocrates' ideas. It made clear that doctors are not magicians. It also stated that doctors had to keep high standards of treatments and behaviour, to work for the benefit of their patients and not to make themselves wealthy by prescribing useless remedies.

The Hippocratic Collection

Name given to the books written by Hippocrates and his followers. It listed details of symptoms and treatments. Some books focused upon surgery, other upon diseases. Doctors continued to use these theories and methods for many centuries.

Hippocrates

Ancient Greek doctor and teacher known as 'The Father of Medicine'. He was born around 460BC on the Greek island of Cos. He encouraged doctors to look for natural treatments for illnesses and rejected supernatural explanations.

The Four Humours

Ancient Greek doctors believed in Hippocrates' idea that the body contained four liquids (Blood, Phlegm, Yellow Bile and Black Bile). When these became unbalanced the patient became ill and the doctor would suggest treatments such as bleeding, purging or emptying the bowels to rebalance them.