HIPPOCRATES. - Greek physician, b. on Cos around 460 B.C., d. at the age of one hundred in Larissa. He studied under the guidance of his father Heraclides, of Herodicus of Leontini and perhaps also of the rhetorician Gorgias. He traveled as a periodistic physician, but he imparted to his journeys the value of modern scientific expeditions, inasmuch as they were undertaken with his disciples for the purpose of study. Having returned to Cos, he devoted himself to the profession and to teaching. His figure informs the entire school of Cos, and his work symbolizes the highest evolution reached in the 5th century B.C. by Greek thought.
The work of H. is gathered in the Corpus Hippocraticum, his own and that of his pupils (53 works in 72 books, collected by the Alexandrian librarians). Among them, mention should be made of the Aphorisms, which express in brief the highest concepts of the healing art; of the 7 books on epidemics, the first and third are by H., the fruit of the observations made during his travels and which he also reports in the books On Airs, Waters, and Places, to be considered a first true work of constitutional pathology. The books with prognostic content are also remembered, and finally, some writings on surgery.
The basis of Hippocratic medicine is the humoral theory, according to which the state of health is given by "crasis," that is, by the equilibrium of the four humors: blood coming from the heart, phlegm or pituita from the brain, yellow bile from the liver and black bile (atrabile) from the spleen. From the state of perfect equilibrium one can pass to that of "dyscrasia," or disease. But pneuma also contributes to crasis, the vital air that from the lungs penetrates into the heart, where through the heat of that organ it is concocted and sent into the whole body to regulate the proper mixture of the humors. Thus, in H.'s medical concept, pathology, previously localized in individual organs, becomes general. With him the concept of constitution is also born, inasmuch as one of the humors can gain the upper hand over the others, arriving at a new organic equilibrium with well-determined psychic and somatic characteristics, in the individual sanguine, phlegmatic, bilious, and atrabilious types. Yet H. does not lack the concept and knowledge of certain determinate diseases seated in particular organs.
With H. clinical medicine is born, from the moment he approaches the sickbed, on which he reads as in an open book; semiotics is likewise born, inasmuch as diagnosis is reached only after a long and meticulous examination of the melatum and of the manifest signs of the disease, preceded by a careful interrogation. Still today the name of H. lives on in the designation of particular clinical pictures; thus the facies Hippocratica is still current for acute abdominal conditions. He also made use of palpation, auscultation and, in certain cases, percussion; he heard friction rubs and moist rales; the "Hippocratic succussion" is still used to reveal hydro-aerial collections. On the other hand, he never mentions the pulse, and his surgery is limited to a few operations of the most absolute necessity: a serious gap in Hippocratic medicine is the scant knowledge and importance of anatomy and physiology. On the therapeutic side, H. relies on the vis medicatrix naturae, a force against disease inherent in man's very nature and which the physician must help in every way, by means rather hygienic than curative, relying on the golden precept: "Primum non nocere." For this reason too, he devoted much attention to dietetics, teaching the use of foods and drinks, both in the state of disease and in that of health. With H. there follows the subsequent evolution of medicine from the priestly form to the demotic form.
Bibliography3 works
Gustavo M. Apolloni