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Is prevention better than cure agree?

Prevention is better than cure applies to all life aspects. Prevention puts a person in a certain condition where he knows that nothing bad will happen if he practices what is required whereas cure can leave a person’s life in a lurch where he doesn’t know what will happen next.

Why prevention is better than cure in short?

It is preferable to be protected from disease than to take its medication. When a disease affects the body, it will either directly or indirectly disrupt the functioning of body organs. The body may never recover.

Did Hippocrates believe in God?

Professing Faith: Story of Hippocrates, the father of Western medicine Gregory Elder, a Redlands resident, is a former professor of history and humanities at Moreno Valley College and a Roman Catholic priest. This photo is from about 2017. (Courtesy Photo) In this time of the coronavirus pandemic, the professor reflects on the history of medicine and its relationship with religion.

1. Last week we met Asclepius, the demigod who was given credit for inventing medicine, and this week we look to Hippocrates, the physician who actually founded modern medicine.
2. But let the reader beware! Do not use the following as actual medical advice but always consult your own physician.
3. Taking advice from dead Greek doctors from 24 centuries ago is not a good idea.

Although he is regarded as the father of Western medicine, we do not know as much as we would like about Hippocrates of Cos. A number of stories have circulated about him, but his long-term impact was founding a school of medicine, which collected and transmitted medical knowledge for many generations.

There exists a body of documents attributed to him called the Hippocratic Corpus, some of which he probably wrote, but most of which were assembled by his successors and attributed to their master. He probably did not write the famous Hippocratic Oath, but ancient Greek medical students had to recite it before they could take up their professions.

Hippocrates was born around the year 460 B.C. on the Greek island of Cos. He was the son and grandson of physicians and probably learned some of his craft from them, although it is probable that these two earlier men were more priests than doctors. Hippocrates went on to study medicine at the Temple of Asclepius on Cos, the ruins of which are still visible today.

• Yet whatever he learned from his predecessors, Hippocrates was the first doctor to attribute the cause of disease to be from this world and not a punishment from the gods.
• With that doctrine, it follows that prescribing specific prayers and rituals to the gods as a cure went by the wayside.
• He was not an atheist or an agnostic by any means and the Hippocratic Oath invokes the gods Apollo, Hygeia and Asclepius by name.

But he was something of a scientist. Hippocrates taught his medical students that illness was derived from one of three sources — diet, lifestyle and the environment. Of these, diet was the most important, and he is known for his dictum that “food is medicine and medicine is food.” As for lifestyle, Hippocrates recommended regular exercise and especially walking as a means of maintaining health.

Environmental influences were the least important for Hippocrates, and he was slow to advise taking of medicines. The discovery of germs, bacteria and viruses was yet 2,000 years away. Hippocrates believed that most illnesses are best treated by the body itself, and so he ordered his patients to rest, and above all to be kept as clean and sterile as possible.

Only clean clear water or wine was to be placed on a wound, and he had a number of ointments that he believed brought some comfort. He also believe that it was very important to be kind to patients, which is good advice in any modern clinic. A key element to treatment was the idea of prognosis, which means “advance knowledge.” He made it a point to take a life history of a person’s health and then a description of the development of any disorder.

1. By these means, he could compare patients and guess from past cases what a similar new one would bring.
2. By keeping records, he argued that a doctor might keep track of procedures that actually worked and avoid those which made matters worse.
3. He took the examination of a patient’s body very seriously and looked for unusual things in the complexion, bowel movements, temperature or fevers.

He may have been the first physician to take the patient’s pulse by holding the wrist. The purpose of this, he believed, was to detect from an increase in the pulse if a patient was lying to him about bad habits. The examination of case studies and physical observations led him to detect specific diseases.

For example, lumps under the skin could be a tumor. The clubbing of fingers indicated problems of the heart or lungs. Hippocrates taught his students how to set bones with traction, clean wounds, drain an abscess and cauterize hemorrhoids. The gentle reader should be reminded that other than alcohol and opium, anesthetics were not invented until 1846.

The best known legacy of Hippocrates is certainly the oath, which was placed in the Hippocratic corpus and was used in medical graduations until recent times. The oath begins with the words, “I swear by Apollo Physician, by Asclepius, by Hygieia, by Panacea, and by all the gods and goddesses, making them my witnesses, that I will carry out, according to my ability and judgment, this oath and this indenture.” The new doctor then promises to work only in the patients’ best interests, never to administer a poison or an abortion and to keep secret anything he might learn from a patient.

1. He also had to promise to look after his teacher in his old age and to teach medical arts to others.
2. Hippocrates was the first to describe widespread diseases as epidemics, and he wrote a tract on the subject.
3. But his diagnosis would not do us a great deal of good in our present situation.
4. He tells us that diseases that begin on even days of the month are more likely to have relapses.

I shall bear that in mind, and if I sneak out of my quarantine, I shall do so only on the odd days. : Professing Faith: Story of Hippocrates, the father of Western medicine

Did Hippocrates think disease was natural?

Hippocratic theory – It is thus with regard to the disease called Sacred: it appears to me to be nowise more divine nor more sacred than other diseases, but has a natural cause from the originates like other affections. Men regard its nature and cause as divine from ignorance and wonder.

—  Hippocrates, On the Sacred Disease Hippocrates is credited as the first person to believe that diseases were caused naturally, not because of superstition and gods. He was acknowledged by the disciples of Pythagoras for allying philosophy and medicine. He separated the discipline of medicine from religion, believing and arguing that disease was not a punishment inflicted by the gods but rather the product of environmental factors, diet, and living habits.

There is not a single mention of a mystical illness in the entirety of the Hippocratic Corpus. However, Hippocrates did hold many convictions that were based on incorrect anatomy and physiology, such as Humorism, Ancient Greek schools of medicine were split into the Knidian and Koan on how to deal with disease.

The Knidian school of medicine focused on diagnosis. Medicine at the time of Hippocrates knew almost nothing of human anatomy and physiology because of the Greek taboo forbidding the dissection of humans. The Knidian school consequently failed to distinguish when one disease caused many possible series of symptoms.

The Hippocratic school or Koan school achieved greater success by applying general diagnoses and passive treatments. Its focus was on patient care and prognosis, not diagnosis. It could effectively treat diseases and allowed for a great development in clinical practice.

Hippocratic medicine and its philosophy are far removed from modern medicine, in which the physician focuses on specific diagnosis and specialized treatment, both of which were espoused by the Knidian school. This shift in medical thought since Hippocrates’ day has generated serious criticism of their denunciations; for example, the French doctor M.S.

Houdart called the Hippocratic treatment a “meditation upon death”. Analogies have been drawn between Thucydides’ historical method and the Hippocratic method, in particular the notion of “human nature” as a way of explaining foreseeable repetitions for future usefulness, for other times or for other cases.

Was Hippocrates a good doctor?

Undoubtedly, Hippocrates was a historical figure, a great physician who exercised a permanent influence on the development of medicine and on the ideals and ethics of the physician.

Chukwudi Eze