ABSTRACT
The great importance of Hippocrates and the Hippocratics is that they founded medical science and the profession of medicine. They needed to assert some important philosophical points, as well as lay the basis for medical ethics and the application of scientific method to healing. Prior to the Hippocratics, disease was commonly thought to be the result of divine intervention. Prior to the Hippocratics, one can find criticism of incompetent individual magicians, but not attacks on magic as a whole. Like the early philosophers, the actual theories of the Hippocratics may seem a little crude to the modern eye, but at least they were theories as opposed to appeals to the Gods, or myths and poems. The Hippocratics produced a series of practical treatises on the treatment of various diseases and traumas. The Hippocratics also laid a moral basis for medicine, and indeed the Hippocratic oath is one of their most enduring legacies, laying down principles for professional conduct.
