We know surprisingly little about what the Father of Medicine actually did
Hippocrates of Kos is credited with freeing medicine from the gods and giving it an oath doctors still recite. Yet historians agree on little beyond his birth on Kos around 460 BC. His achievements blur into those of the Hippocratic school and the many authors of the writings that carry his name.
Most personal details come from Soranus of Ephesus, writing in the 2nd century AD, with later accounts in the 10th-century Suda and in John Tzetzes. Contemporaries barely mention him: Plato calls him Hippocrates of Kos, the Asclepiad, and Aristotle refers to him once. By tradition his father Heraclides was a physician, he learned from his father and grandfather, and he probably trained at the healing temple on Kos. His sons Thessalus and Draco and son-in-law Polybus became his students, and Galen considered Polybus the true successor.
The central shift credited to him is treating disease as natural. Rather than punishment from the gods, illness was seen as the product of environment, diet and habits, and the Hippocratic Corpus contains no mention of mystical disease. That helped make medicine a profession separate from religious ritual and philosophy. Much of the underlying biology was wrong, however, notably the theory of four humours, later discredited, and Greek taboos against human dissection left anatomy almost unknown.
Greek medicine split between two schools. The Knidian school chased precise diagnosis but, lacking anatomy, often confused one disease with its varied symptoms. The Koan, or Hippocratic, school focused instead on prognosis and patient care, using general diagnoses and gentle, passive treatment. It trusted the body's own healing power, stressed rest and cleanliness, washed wounds only with clean water or wine, and was wary of drugs. Its idea of the crisis held that illnesses reach a turning point toward recovery or death, supposedly on predictable critical days. This passive approach worked well for simple problems such as broken bones, set with traction on devices like the Hippocratic bench.
Modern medicine, built on specific diagnosis and targeted treatment, is closer to the Knidian outlook, and the French doctor M. S. Houdart dismissed Hippocratic treatment as a meditation upon death. Still, careful bedside observation and the sorting of diseases into categories descend from this school. Hippocrates himself died around 370 BC, having taught and practised to the end of his life.
Source: Hippocrates
