HIPPOCRATES
(460-370 B.C.E.)
Western medicine begins properly with the figure of Hippocrates. His name has been associated with a medical corpus that demanded and received more attention than the works of any other physician in history. Born on the island of Cos in the Aegean Sea, Hippocrates traveled widely in Greece and enjoyed a reputation as a teacher and practitioner of medicine. Rejecting the mysticism embedded in the medical thinking of the time, he emphasized the importance of clinical observation. Contrary to common belief, the famous oath that bears his name was not written by Hippocrates but by the Pythagoreans in the latter part of the fourth century B.C.E.