Table of Contents
History of Modern Medicine1
Athens
Diagnosis word comes from Greek, like many(or rather most) of the healthcare terminologies. In ancient Greek, the philosopher Plato first started putting the foundation for modern medicine in and around 373 BCE in Plato’s school, which was around observation, analysis, understanding, assessment, medicines, monitoring, and treatment, followed by healing.
Treat your patients not as if they are suffering bodies, but as curious students
Plato, Greek Philosopher
Plato’s student Aristotle took healthcare to the next level when he invented logic. Before Aristotle’s logic, a medicine used to be “what combinations to be given under what symptoms.” After Aristotle’s logic became popular, the larger question was then “why the body is showing some symptoms in the first place.” The second most important question was, “is a set of symptoms observed in one patient, can be observed in another patient too?” And if the same set of symptoms is seen in two different individuals, then it is the internal part of the body that is changing in certain ways, and if two healthy individuals show no signs, and two different sets of individuals show a different combination of symptoms, then can the health be classified into distinct states, and illness as a transition from state A to state B?”
Aristotle is considered the grandfather of modern medicine. Aristotle’s first book on medicine, Parts of Animals combines anatomy or internal organs. In fact, Aristotle completed this work along with his wife. Aristotle and his wife Pythias are considered to be the first couple in history to have completed and published joint research on science. Well, women were empowered even in 350 BCE Greece.
The rational mind controls the irrational body of a civilized person, and the irrational body controls the rational mind in the barbarians
Aristotle
