ANCIENT MEDICINE
Ancient Greek surgery
According to Greek mythology, Asclepius (son of Apollo) was the god of Medicine and the first healer-physician. This is why the Rod of Asclepius is used worldwide today as a symbol of medicine.
The oath taken in modern times by doctors, upon entering the profession, is based on the Hippocratic Oath written in the 5th century BC.
Hippocrates’ medical theories and teachings are included in the Hippocratic Corpus, which is a collection of about seventy early medical works from ancient Greece.
Herophilus is considered the first professor of Medicine and the founder of the Alexandria School of Medicine. He is the father of Anatomy. He studied the brain and identified it as the center of intelligence and the nervous system (as opposed to what Aristotle believed). Herophilus also made a distinction between the vein and the artery based on the fact that an artery, unlike a vein, has a pulse.
Erasistratus studied the difference in intelligence between humans and other animals and linked it to the increased complexity of the surface area of the human brain.
According to Erasistratus, the vascular system is controlled by an air vacuum, which is created when air entering the body is drawn by the lungs into the heart, converted into vital spirit and then carried through the arteries throughout the body.
According to ancient Greek physicians, who supported the humoral theory, the diseases that people contracted were directly related to the environment in which they lived.
The ancient Greeks, during wartime, performed surgeries based on experience (empirical medicine) without influences from magic or religion. In order to provide possible explanations for these choices of the ancient Greeks, an attempt is made to describe the surgical methods they applied (e.g. in tumour removal) and to make comparisons with modern medical methods.
The majority of medical terminology used worldwide has Greek roots: cardiology, trauma, myocardium, tachycardia, arteries, aorta, aneurysm, arrhythmia , endoscopic, stenosis, sternotomy and even the word pandemic.