Hipócrates - Considerado por muitos, o Pai da Medicina

​ "May food be your medicine and your medicine be your food." Hippocrates

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About 2500 years ago, in the 5th century BC, a man was born who changed the concept of Medicine, transforming it into a science. That man was Hippocrates, still considered today the "Father of Medicine".

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Very little is known about the real life of Hippocrates. According to data scattered in some works by Plato and other authors, Hippocrates was born on the Greek island of Cos in 460 a. a. and died in Larisa, Greece, in 377 a. C. Although many of these data are related to legends, the fact is that Hippocrates was, without any doubt, the most famous physician in Ancient Greece.

It is said that Hippocrates received his father's first teachings and to complete his training, he studied Rhetoric and Philosophy.

Having studied at the two largest medical centers at the time, Kos and Knidos, and being endowed with an extraordinary spirit of observation and profound dedication to his work, Hippocrates was considered the greatest physician of his time, having been awarded to him (or to his school in Kos). ) the authorship of a collection of works, Corpus Hippocraticum, with around 60 books and monographs. This remarkable work of systematization is based on a careful observation of the symptoms of illnesses and encompasses several domains of medical knowledge at the time, ranging from anatomy to physiology, passing through mental illnesses. «Ares, Águas e Lugares» can be considered the first treatise on public health, medical geography, climatology and physiotherapy.

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Hippocrates sought to base Medicine on clinical experience, introducing a type of logical rationality and thus breaking with the practice of Medicine of his time, which was based on magic and religion.

Hippocrates broke with this supernatural view, attributing an organic genesis to the psychic aspects of individuals and interrelating a biological cause with a type of personality. Its importance in Medicine is compared to that of Socrates in Philosophy and the fact that he devoted an important part of his work to mental illnesses led several contemporary authors to consider that Hippocrates played a key role in the emergence and development of Psychology.

His fame as a clinician began in 430-429 BC, during the great plague that ravaged the city of Athens. The epidemic would have died out after Hippocrates had fires lit all over the city. For some, Hippocrates started from the observation that artisans, obliged by profession to keep close to fire, seemed immune to the contagion of the disease. The sage ordered that fires be lit as a way of extending immunity to the entire population.

One of Hippocrates' therapeutic concepts was the distinction between symptoms and illnesses. For him, as for today's doctors, symptoms are just outward manifestations of something happening in the body. Hippocrates' work aimed to discover how the human body worked, always taking into account the action of the environment and food.

"May food be your medicine and your medicine be your food."

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Hippocrates created a school where Medicine became a Science and, in this way, only presupposed rational processes. It elaborated and complied with a strict code of ethics, whose precepts are contained in the oath that doctors consecrate to this day when they graduate, where they commit, among other things, to defend medical practice and to practice their art with dedication, ethics and honesty

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Here are some important points from the famous “Hippocratic Oath”:

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"I promise that, when practicing the art of healing, I will always show myself faithful to the precepts of honesty, charity and science. By penetrating the interior of homes, my eyes will be blind, my tongue will silence the secrets that are revealed to me, what will I have as a precept of honor. I will never use my profession to corrupt customs or favor crime.

If I fulfill this oath faithfully, let me enjoy my life and my art in good standing among men and forever. If he pushes me away or infringes him, the opposite happens to me."

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Hippocrates has remained that way, through the centuries, not only because of science but above all because of his moral qualities, the ideal type of physician.

Wise and human, he united tranquility, seriousness, reflection and discretion, extremely important values then and no less important today.  

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Bruno Gonçalves (Naturopath)