Greek Medicine (1500BC - 500BC)

Supernatural Beliefs and Treatments

• Temples were called Asclepions and people went there to stay when they felt ill.
  
• In the Asclepions people would bath and relax, pray to Asclepious and sleep in a Abaton. An Abaton was a building with a roof but no walls. The Greeks believed that while they were sleeping a god would come to them in a dream and cure them.
• Priests also did rounds, performing rituals which involved placing snakes on the patients.
• Success stories were recorded in inscriptions on the walls of the Asclepions.
• Asclepios' daughters, Hygeia and Panacea, were also involved in healing

Natural Beliefs and Treatments 

• Hippocrates was one of the first people to look scientific reasons for diseases and their treatments. He is acknowledged as the father of modern medicine.
  
• The Hippocratic Oath is a promise made by doctors to obey rules of behaviour in their professional lives. Doctors still make the Hippocratic Oath today.
• Hippocrates wrote many books called, the Hippocratic Corpus, which would become the basis of medical understanding for the next 1000 years.
• Hippocrates also came up with the clinical method of observation which doctors…