Ancient Greece Health and Medicine Essay Example

Medicine all began in Ancient Greece by one man named Hippocrates (ca. 460-377 B.C.E); he is known as the father of medicine. It all began with the Greeks trying to come up with a logic system that would help them diagnose certain diseases. The logical system was based upon the fact that we had humors, and each person had four humours that were substances inside our bodies. The four substances were: blood, black bile, yellow bile, and phlegm (pronounced mucus, meaning boogers). They believed that if your four substances were balanced then you would remain a healthy person, but if one of your substances became unequal then you would become ill. If you became ill then the doctors believed that you had too much of one substances and that’s what was making you ill, therefore, they would go about trying to remove whatever extra substance you had. “Hippocrates also made humours correspond with the seasons: the first season that of blood and air corresponded to spring; the summer was fire, bile and liver; autumn was earth, black bile and spleen, while winter was the season of water, of phlegm (mucus) and of the brain” (history of medicine). As for diseases many of them that surfaced in Ancient Greek many years ago are still here today and actually go by the same name in some cases. Also some of the treatments are in the same idea as we have today, but today we have a lot better technology and understanding of what is going on. Firstly, the Greeks had cholesterol; cholesterol is a combination of two Greek words; “chole” meaning bile, and “steros” means solid. Cholesterol was first found as small stones inside of the gallbladder, and their cure was flaxseeds which show effectiveness is lowering high cholesterol. Secondly, the Greeks had diabetes. Diabetes comes from the Greek prefix ‘dia’ meaning apart and the word ‘bainein’ which means to stand, the word together meant a compass or a siphon. The word siphon was a reference to the excessive urination from a person with