Greek physician who founded a medical school on Cos. This school produced more than 50 books, as well a system of medical methodology and ethics which is still practiced today. Upon being granted their M. D. degrees, new doctors still swear a so-called Hippocratic oath. In On Ancient Medicine, Hippocrates stated that medicine is not philosophy, and therefore must be practiced on a case-by-case basis rather than from first principles. In The Sacred Disease, he stated that epilepsy (and disease in general) do not have divine causes. He advocated clinical observations, diagnosis, and prognosis, and argued that specific diseases come from specific causes. Hippocrates's methodology relied on physical examination of the patient and proceeded in what was, for the most part, a highly rational deductive framework of understanding through observation. (An exception was the belief that disease was caused by "isonomia", an imbalance in the four humors originally suggested by Empedocles and consisting of yellow bile, blood, phlegm, and black bile.) The Hippocratic corpus of knowledge was widely distributed, highly influential, and marked the rise of rationality in both medicine and the physical sciences.

Additional biographies: Greek and Roman Science and Technology