Advances in Medical Ethics
Open Access

Contemporary healthcare is based on the concepts of Hippocratic treatment

Peter Heins^{* *}Correspondence: Peter Heins, Department of Medical Ethics, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada, Email:

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About the Study

Hippocrates was an ancient Greek physician who was born on the small Greek island of Kos, off the coast of Asia Minor. Medicine was practiced as an empirical art and had a religious aspect before his time. It is to his credit that he distinguished medicine from magic and religion, freeing it from philosophical speculation and laying the groundwork for modern medicine. He claimed that the sickness was caused by environmental circumstances, nutrition, and inheritance, rather than being a divine retribution.

Hippocrates was the first to proclaim medicine to be a science. As represented in the Hippocratic Oath, Hippocrates centered medical practice on the natural approach and treatment of ailments, emphasizing the necessity of understanding the patient's health, mental independence, and the requirement for individual, social, and natural environment harmony. To approach the disease, Hippocrates concentrated on "natural" treatment. Hippocrates is regarded as the creator of ancient Greek medicine because of his method, which is still largely accepted today. The core belief of Hippocratic medicine, according to Kristen is that medicine should be performed as a scientific profession based on natural sciences, detecting and preventing diseases as well as treating them.

Hippocrates also felt that a physician should learn anatomy, particularly the anatomy of the spine and its relationship to the nervous system, which governs all of the body's activities. Furthermore, he was the first to believe that this observation aids in the recognition of disease signs. In addition, the Hippocratic tradition stressed disease origins and natural cures, psychological aspects' causes and therapeutic value, diet and lifestyle, mental, physical, and spiritual independence, and the necessity for individual and social and natural environment harmony. Furthermore, as the practice of medicine demanded, the "Hippocratic" physician made certain that the patient was healthy. Surprisingly, the Hippocratic ideal is mirrored in the Hippocratic Pledge (the oath necessary for acquiring a medical license in Greece), which emphasizes professional honesty, compassion, and human dignity in medical practice.

Hippocrates also made a significant contribution to medicine in terms of professional ethics and standards, which are still acknowledged and followed today. According to Miles, Hippocratic medicine is based on evidence-based knowledge since Hippocratic physicians were compelled to provide thorough and detailed medical histories, which is similar to the contemporary research process. Greek physicians were specifically encouraged to take account of the geographical location, climate, age, gender, habits, and nutrition while diagnosing syndromes or diseases. The researchers also kept track of reasonable mood swings, sleep length, nightmares, appetite, thirst, nausea, pain location and severity, chills, coughing, sneezing, belching, flatulence, convulsions, nosebleeds, and even menstruation abnormalities. Fever, respiration, paralysis, and colour of the limbs, pain on palpation, faeces, urine, sputum, and vomit all required special attention during the physical examination. The total evaluation of these recordings was used to evaluate the final diagnosis and determine the type of disease therapy. Furthermore, according to Schiefsky, the precision or specifics of prognosis, as well as the reliability of prognostic indicators, were important aspects of Hippocratic medicine. According to a recent Greek review, Hippocratic physicians are required to examine a patient, attentively note symptoms, diagnose the patient, and then treat the patient.

As a result, Hippocrates built the foundations of clinical medicine as we know it today. He defined a number of medical terminologies that are commonly used by doctors, such as symptom, diagnostic, therapy, trauma, and sepsis. He also detailed a large variety of ailments without resorting to superstition. Diabetes, gastritis, enteritis, arthritis, cancer, eclampsia, coma, paralysis, insanity, panic, hysteria, epilepsy, and many other diseases have names that are still used in modern medicine. As a result, Hippocrates made a significant contribution to contemporary medicine by saying that diagnosis, prognosis, and therapy should be based on comprehensive observation, reason, and experience. Clearly, there was no longer a blend of superstition, magic, religious views, and empirical therapies examined by priest-physicians after Hippocrates, and medicine became a true science by accumulating experience.

Conclusion

The ancient Greeks recognized long ago that "a healthy mind in a healthy body" was the key to human physical and mental health, our findings suggest that health care in ancient Greece was primarily focused on promoting both; thus, health care and psychological support aimed to address the psychosomatic entity rather than just disease symptoms. Regardless of whether the ailment was caused by the spirit or the body, mental and physical care was administered in tandem. Overall, Hippocrates laid the groundwork for medicine's foundations, creating medical terminologies and classifications, protocols, and rules for disease classification that are now considered gold standards for disease diagnosis, management, and prevention.