Ancient Greek Doctors

“Some patients recover, because they believe in doctors” this quote comes from one of the most famous ancient Greek doctors, Hippocrates. When we look at the ancient Greeks life it’s mainly focused around the Gods but in medicine the doctors, like Hippocrates, tried to figure out natural reasons as to why someone got ill. Certainly not every person trusted doctors because many still turned to the Gods to try to fix their illness. After researching about ancient Greek doctors people can realize that some of the methods we use today are rooted in the Greek culture. From various sources we can see that the Greek physicians had certain tools they used, had reasons as to why the body was unbalanced and someone got sick, could perform some types
The doctors believed a women’s womb was separate from the rest of the body and had a mind of its own. Hippocrates and Plato theorized if a woman was celibate for a while her uterus would remove itself creating suffocation and hysteria around the body. Doctors thought that baths, physical massages, or infusions would help put a woman’s womb back in place if it had already broken free. To avoid the womb from roaming the body ancient women were encouraged to marry at a young age and start having kids for as long as they could. The diagnosis of hysteria developed from this because the Greeks used the word hystera for the word uterus. Along with this there has also been documentation that the Greeks knew how to perform brain surgery. Hippocrates had said before in his writings that there were ancient purposes for why doctors would drill a hole one’s skull as a medical purpose. Archeologists have found, on the island of Chios, four tombs and one of the bodies had trepanning markings. At the Chios museum, Asterios Aidonis an anthropologist, this discovery was interesting because there were actual signs of trepanation on the skull. Aidonis said that the skull had a 2 centimeter hole in the back left side and the skull indicated healing which led him to consider the person didn’t have much infection and likely lived a while after the operation. He also said the person was possibly around 50 years old when they passed. This type of procedure is remarkable to see happen in the ancient Greek times and to understand they were knowledgeable enough to carry it out because even in modern times brain surgery is a cautious operation. Although there are only a portion of successful document cases of these operation the reason doctors took on the operation was to help the internal bleeding that was caused by a skull