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Hippocrates Health And The Body Essay

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Hippocrates Health And The Body Essay
Ideas about health of the body completely shaped the treatment of patients by physicians and the general maintenance of health by people. Each and every practice was based on beliefs about how the body worked, and each prescribed or suggested treatment was explained in relation to how the body worked. Interestingly, although many today would glance at the beliefs about health and the body in ancient Greece, and dismiss them, upon careful examination, many treatments and ideas were not entirely invalid. In ancient Greek, the body was a temple of the soul and intellect, therefore care of the body was of utmost importance. To fully understand this, one must understand how the ancient Greeks viewed the body, and how they believed bodily functions …show more content…
Some of his other ideas are found in separate writings. In Hippocrates’ “Diseases,” he went further into the ideas of how the body worked, but focused more on the treatments of diseases. He delineated specific treatments for specific diseases throughout the majority of this essay, and went into detail about bleeding people or specific treatments. Treatments were suggested depending on what symptoms or signs the patient was showing. For example, Hippocrates had very deliberate instructions for the sign of a fever. Each treatment was interesting because his instructions were very specific about every step. For example, one of his steps included the instruction to “inject warm wine and oil into through a small tube.” The specificity of his writing indicated that the Greek view on health and maintenance of the body was highly regarded. The level of awareness for differing illness and their treatments showed that it was an important
This specificity was later seen in his writing, “A Regimen for Health,” when he was describing how to maintain a proper diet. Throughout this document, he had many suggestions about the correct nourishment and proper exercise regimes. This intricate description of maintaining health, showed the stress that the Greeks put on the importance of health. Exercise was important because it maintained beauty and health. Through Greek art, one can see the emphasis on the beauty of the individual, and through these writings this idea is

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