Accomplishments
Hippocrates had many breakthroughs in his field. Some of them still resonate today. These breakthroughs were helped on and slowed by the values of the Greek culture. A few of the accomplishments even focused on altering the values of the culture to be more like those of Hippocrates.
Changes in the Values of the Greek Culture
Hippocrates made two major changes on the values on the Greek culture. The first altered the values of the culture at large and the second altered the Greek culture within the class of physicians.
- He altered the way that the average citizen looked at health and sickness. As we know, before Hippocrates the average Greek citizen and almost all doctors thought that the gods had some play in our health. Hippocrates took all superstition out of the medical field. While the average Greeks values before him were based solely of morality he added his own personal values of a healthy lifestyle to their values. This helped save many peopled lives by promoting moderation, cleanliness, and exercise.
- He changed the values of doctors using his Hippocratic Oath, or at least by creating the ideals that were written in the Hippocratic Oath. Some of the ideals in the Hippocratic Oath came out of Greek society so we can see that the societies values had an influence on him, but some were his own original values. Some of the new values that he promoted were professionalism in the doctor class. Doctors after him were cleaner and never engaged in sexual relations with their patients. He also promoted the value that doctors can never intentionally hurt their patients or work for their own personal gain in any way that is not beneficial to the patient. This was different from the values the every man for himself sophists had left on Greek culture.
Other Important Changes
- Setting up a school of medicine to further reducate doctors so that they would all have similar methods and could have a place to research new ones.
- His students wrote the Hippocratic Corpus which included many treatments which were probably developed by him. Two that have been definitely attributed to him were bone resetting and aspirin both of which are still used today.
Failures
Hippocrates only major failure was his theory on what was inside the body. His theory the Humor Theory has been proved completely wrong. He proposed the there were four Humors inside of us, black bile, yellow bile, blood, and phlegm. When these were imbalanced a person became sick. He was prevented from learning more by the Greek value on protecting corpses which would not allow him to dissect one.
His only other failure was not his fault. It was that after his death he was so revered that people felt his knowledge could not be built upon and medical expansion stalled. This can be attributed to the Greek value on respect for elders with greater power
Final Judgment
it is clear the Hippocrates accomplishments far outweigh his failure. His unique set of values mixed in with the Greek ones led him to such success that he is still called the Father of Medicine.