Alcmaeon of Croton

By the middle of the fifth century BC there were three major centers Greek medical science: Croton (southern Italy), Agrigentum south coast Sicily) and Cos (island of Turkey).

The oldest of these medical centers was in Croton, and is most famous member was Alcmaeon.

Alcmaeon of Croton is the most important figure in the history of Greek medicine before Hippocrates. He was a Greek natural philosopher and physician significant for his theory of health and disease and for his investigations into the nature of the sense organs.

He was born in 510 BC and was a disciple of Pythagoras.

According to Chalcidius, Alcmaeon of Croton practices dissection and is said to have been the first man to make dissections. He was also the first to study the structure of the eye. He observed that the eye contained water. He also concluded that the eye contained light and that this light was necessary for vision

Alcmaeon of Croton was the first writer to champion the brain as the site of sensation and cognition.

He rejected earlier conceptions of disease as something possessing a separate existence of its own. He maintained that disease is due to the disturbance of the body’s natural equilibrium.
Alcmaeon of Croton

Biography of Hippocrates

Biography of Hippocrates
Hippocrates is referred to ‘father of medicine’ in recognition of his lasting contributions to the field as the founder of the Hippocratic school of medicine.

Hippocrates was born to Heraclides, a physician and Praxitela, daughter of Phenaretis in year of 460 BC on the Greek island of Cos. He learned medicine from his own father and grandfather.

He also studied other subject with Democritus the Abderite and Gorgias of Leontini. Democritus was famous Greek materialist philosopher while Gorgias was famous philosopher and rhetorician at that time.

Hippocrates also trained at asklepieion (healing temple) of Kos and took lessons from Thracian physician Herodicus of Selymbria. Herodicus was Greek physician famous as the first person use of therapeutic exercise for treatment of disease and maintenance of health. Herodicus was described as gymnastic master.

Hippocrates later became a famous physician and teacher of medicine. He was regarded as the greatest physician of his time. He based his medical practice on observations and on the study of the human body.

He held the belief that illness had a physical and a rational explanation. Hippocrates held a belief that the body must be treated as a whole and not just a series of parts. Hippocrates was the first to give the physician an independent standing, separate from the cosmological speculator, or nature philosopher. Hippocrates confined the medical man to medicine.

He soon developed an Oath of Medical Ethics for physician. He died in 377 BC at the age of 90 years old. Some says at the age of 83 or 106 years He lies buried between Gyrton and Larissa.
Biography of Hippocrates