Hippocrates, a Greek physician, lived in the 5th century BC, and founded the Hippocratic School of medicine. He revolutionized Greek medicine, for he believed in, and developed the practice of the clinical method of observation. This was the careful nothing of all the symptoms of a disease, and of the changes in a patient’s condition during the illness.
Hippocrates believed that the body must be treated as a whole. He made medicine a discipline distinct from other fields, and his biggest contribution was that he rejected superstition and the belief that supernatural, or divine forces, were the cause of illness.
In short, it was Hippocrates who transformed medicine into a science. He wrote on a variety of medical topics including diagnosis, epidemics, obstetrics, paediatrics, nutrition and surgery.
To this day, newly qualified doctors take an oath called the Hippocratic Oath that lays down the basic rules of conduct that doctors must follow.