Hippocrates (ca 460-377 B.C.) was a Greek physician, who is generally recognized as the “Father” of medicine. It is not clear whether Hippocrates was a specific person or a group of scholars who left many important observations on the nature of human illness. Perhaps there was one man who founded the Hippocratic school, with many followers who recorded their thoughts as “Hippocrates.”
After Thales, Hippocrates was one of the first to challenge mystical religious concepts of human illness. The Hippocratic school was Ionian in origin (see Thales) and thus more inclined to rely on empiricism--the careful observation of nature--as a basis for understanding disease. The Hippocratic school taught that disease is not a mystical phenomenon caused by gods or demons, but is a natural condition with natural causes and natural remedies. Prayers and incantations cannot cure disease, but natural substances may be able to. Through careful observation of the patient, the physician can diagnose, treat, and even develop prognoses or predictions of the patient’s course of illness and/or recovery.
Hippocratic writings were rediscovered during the Middle Ages, and they had profound effects upon medicine right into the 17th Century.