Hippocrates was born on the Greek island of Cos, to Heraclides, a physician and Praxitela, daughter of Phenaretis in year of 460 BC. He learned medicine from his own father and grandfather. He also studied other subject with Democritus the Abderite and Gorgias of Leontini.
Democritus was famous Greek materialist philosopher while Gorgias was famous philosopher and rhetorician at that time.
Hippocrates also trained at asklepieion (healing temple) of Kos and took lessons from Thracian physician Herodicus of Selymbria. Herodicus was Greek physician famous as the first person use of therapeutic exercise for treatment of disease and maintenance of health. Herodicus was described as gymnastic master. Hippocrates seems to have traveled extensively in Greece and Asia Minor throughout his career, teaching and practicing medicine.
Hippocrates returned to Kos and established a school of medicine that became renowned in the ancient world.
Hippocrates later became a famous physician and teacher of medicine. He was regarded as the greatest physician of his time. He based his medical practice on observations and on the study of the human body.
Hippocrates was apparently the first to systematize the existing knowledge and procedures and to ground medical practice in solid observation rather than theory.
Dismissing the common view that illness was caused by disfavor of the gods or possession by evil spirits. Hippocrates believed that sickness had a rational, physical explanation. Hippocrates was the first to give the physician an independent standing, separate from the cosmological speculator, or nature philosopher. Hippocrates confined the medical man to medicine.
He soon developed an Oath of Medical Ethics for physician. All new doctors coming out of the ancient Hippocrates school would take the Hippocratic Oaths. He died in 377 BC at the age of 90 years old. Some says at the age of 83 or 106 years. He lies buried between Gyrton and Larissa.
More than 60 extant works were attribute to him in antiquity and are now known as the Hippocratic Corpus.
Biography of Hippocrates
