ABSTRACT
It is generally acknowledged that scientific medicine originated in ancient Greece in the fifth century BC. Although a corpus of concepts and treatments existed in more ancient civilizations, the Greek revolution in medicine was characterized by a completely new system of interpretations of the diseases and of their causes. The idea that diseases were created by the Gods was abandoned. Instead, the most prominent medical figure of that time, Hippocrates, a physician living in the small island of Cos, proposed that the causes of illnesses were due to the environment (Jouanna, 1992). Hippocrates was the 17th physician of his family and a descendant of Asclepios, prince of Tricca in Thessalia in Northern Greece. The sons of Asclepios were renowned in Greece because they participated in the Trojan War. One of them, Machaon, was one of the warriors hidden in the famous horse and was killed during the fight that destroyed the city. Another, Podalires, survived the war and established himself in Carla, in Asia Minor, where he founded the city of Syria. Some of his descendants moved to the island of Cos, and we still know the names of all ofthem from Podalires to Hippocrates (Jouanna, 1992). The family was well known, and the young Hippocrates received a complete medical education. It seems that he learned dissection in the same time as reading and writing (Jouanna, 1992). He traveled to Thessalia, but eventually came back to Cos, where he spent the rest of his life.
