Ancient Medicine

"On Ancient Medicine" or "Tradition in Medicine" is a treatise in the Hippocratic Corpus, a collection of ancient Greek medical texts attributed to Hippocrates and written probably in the late 5th century BC. As with all works in the Hippocratic Corpus, authorship cannot be confirmed and is regarded as dubious by some historians of medicine.

As the title suggests, the treatise gives a reconstruction of the development of medicine, assuming that it was an outgrowth of the discovery by ancient people that health could be promoted by the consumption of certain foods prepared properly. Primitive peoples ate raw food and their health suffered greatly. Once they began to grind grain into flour and bake bread, and to boil strong foods, their longevity increased. Some people had more delicate constitutions and required milder foods; and so the art of medicine was born.

The treatise is a rhetorical attack on pre-Hippocratic medicine as it was apparently practiced by many of the author's contemporaries. He (the author was probably male, assuming it was written by a Hippocratic physician) criticized doctors who prescribed a treatment such as "hot" or "cold," "wet" or "dry," categories which sound like the four humors: blood, yellow bile (vomit), black bile (excrement), phlegm (boogers). No substance is any of these things, the author argues.

The inclusion of this work in the Hippocratic Corpus is surprising, given that it attacks the humor theory underpinning later Hippocratic and Galenic medicine. The contrast is one reason for modern skepticism about its authorship.

ancient medicine goes back all the way to the prehistoric people, this is the name given to those who could not write, as soon as writing began,the prehistoric period was over. The main cure of disease in prehistoric times was centered around a supernatural approach, Trepanning also spelt Trephanning, this was where a hole was drilled into the skull of a patient, this was said to let any evil spirits out which would cure illness. of course nothing had been invented to numb the pain so the victim would have been in horrific pain. Nearly everyone who had this act performed on them died, some from blood loss some from infection.