ABSTRACT
Hippocrates was the first physician whose rational approach to medicine is documented. He was sure that health and disease, like every phenomenon, were susceptible to logical investigation and reasoned explanation. The physician is the servant of the science, and the patient must do what he can to fight the disease with the assistance of the physician. Hippocrates personified the ideal of the learned physician, in whom science, philosophy and common sense are united and who attends the patient as a personal advocate rather than as a magician or state functionary. The resurgent humanism of the Renaissance gave the physician a heightened sense of his own dignity as a man of learning, but was slow to deliver the empirical scientific knowledge that would have justified it. Nonetheless Galen, knew the value of a good bedside manner. He understood that it was essential for a successful physician to secure a patient's trust through explanation, empathy, and responsiveness to subtle signs of anxiety.
