Greek Medicine #2

The Four Humours actually led the Greeks to do everything in moderation; they didn't eat too much, didn't exercise too much and so the theory a helped to make the Greeks more healthy.

It made people actually search for the causes of illness instead of believing in God and the supernatural.

People were starting to explain real causes of disease logically.

Hippocrates told all of his students that all diseases could be treated without using any magic. He told them that all they had to do was discover the nature of each disease, and then would be able to treat it.

Observation: Greek doctors were trained to diagnose illnesses carefully. they would observe the symptoms of their patients and would write down each stage of the illness of the patient.

Advice: Observation doctors knew that many diseases cleared up on their own without help from a doctor. so, a lot of the time they just gave advice to a patient on how their disease may develop. This advice was based on their knowledge from earlier patients who had similar symptoms. These doctors also offered advice on avoiding illness. they instructed patients on what they should eat, on taking exercise and especially on keeping clean.

Treatments: Once the doctors knew that their patients humours were unbalanced they had to try and help to restore the proper balance. they did this by making the patient Vomit, Purging their bowels or by Bleeding them. Doctors knew that there were some illnesses that they could not cure, and so they often sent some of their patients to an Asclepion-a miracle could happen!

Surgery: From around 1200BC, iron and steel gave doctors stronger and much sharper instruments.

Greek surgeons developed techniques for setting broken bones and also amputation. however, very few operations were done inside the body. One example of this was the draining of the lungs-(if a patient had pneumonia). this is an operation that was frequently performed and was successful in many cases, thanks to doctors' careful observation of symptoms and patterns of illnesses.