ABSTRACT
Chinese doctors under the Chou Dynasty advocated health preservation through exercise, deep breathing and temperance. Wine was forbidden. They linked physical health to moral well-being and spiritual serenity, which led to cosmic harmony. Mysticism dominated many ancient health and healing cultures, but temporal and divine causes of disease began to be separated in the natural philosophy of ancient Greek culture. Asclepiades rejected humoralism in favour of solidism, and developed the corpuscular theory into an atomistic analysis of health and disease. Methodism was a holistic doctrine of medicine which advocated the classic Coan regime of air, light, dietetics, exercise, hydropathy and massage as the principal route to health maintenance. The Hippocratic tradition also recognized that health and disease were affected by season and the quality of environments. Philosophies of health were developed by and for learned elites. Ancient environmentalism was also linked to mystical theories of salubrity until Greek rationalism turned it into a practical art to assist colonial settlement.
