Nothing prepared me for what I learned on the island of Kos.

In the summer of 2018, a group of family physicians with their families and friends traveled to Greece.
One day trip took us to the island of Kos – the home of Hippocrates who lived c. 460 – c. 370 BCE.

As someone who’s worked in medicine for 40+ years, I had heard about Hippocrates and had read the oath attributed to him a number of times.

I expected to learn about the use of herbs. I knew the ancients had identified a number of flowers and herbs that had positive physical benefits. Also I expected to learn about their nutritional therapies.

As I learned more about Hippocrates and his thinking I was blown away.

I did not appreciate the holistic mental model Hippocrates and his colleagues used to explain health and
illness. They believed that "The natural forces within us are the true healers of disease.”  They understood that each of us has a life force within that is capable of mounting a curative response to disease. The power of our inner healer stimulated by healing ideas, herbal and nutritional interventions and exercise allows us to prevent and to overcome disease when it occurs.

I think Hippocrates and his followers would be shocked to learn that we “moderns” believe that pharmaceuticals and surgical procedures create the healing process; that our ideas have little role in disease and healing. They would also be disappointed to learn what we’ve done with the Placebo Effect.  Instead of studying it to learn how our bodies/selves produce a positive response to an intervention (or non-intervention), or an idea/suggestion, we’ve ignored it so we can focus on our “medical marvels.”

The Hippocratic approach began with a very detailed examination of the patient.  “He who administers therapy must first know the whole [human being] as a unique psychosomatic entity.”* The physician was expected to observe the physical symptoms and to discern the patient’s inner dimensions. They looked for root causes with a wide lens.

I was stunned to learn how much knowledge and science Hippocrates and his colleagues had developed.  As I read about the “Hippocratic model”, I realized how much they had discerned, not through rigorous (reductionist) experimentation, but through many years of practice and learning.

In addition to recognizing that disease is not caused by supernatural forces, Hippocrates invented clinical medicine and what we know today as the doctor-patient relationship.

Perhaps most amazingly of all, he was the first known physician to recognize that thoughts and emotions arise in the brain rather than the heart.

Hippocrates was not alone in this endeavor.  He had many colleagues and followers and five centers in Greece where this community of healers cared for people.

On display in the Hippocratic Institute, I saw the surgical and other instruments which they had developed. Again I was stunned. The thought of performing surgeries before the advent of powerful anesthesia was surprising. Is it possible that they used methods that helped patients to control or even blunt their pain response? Is it possible to help patients have “bloodless and painless surgeries?”  There are many places in our current world where this is exactly how surgery is performed. We think of these cultures as being anti-scientific and backward; where people’s fears and fantasies are tricked into activation.

I now wonder who is the more gullible.

Each of the 5 healing centers extant in Hippocrates day included an amphitheater where plays were performed. The plays introduced themes, topics and ideas that stimulated a healing response in patients present for the productions; for Hippocrates the mind mattered.

He was the first to regard disease as a natural, rather than a supernatural phenomenon, encouraging doctors to look at physical and mental causes of illness and to use objective observation and critical deductive reasoning. Hippocrates believed that the causes of disease could be understood only through empirical study.

I returned home with a deepened understanding of health and healing. It’s time to stimulate a renewal movement within medicine and especially within Family Medicine. It’s Family Physicians who are most likely to transform medicine into what Hippocrates envisioned to be possible. And it is important for each of us to learn about the power of our inner healer.

Laurence Bauer, MSW, MEd
Laurence.bauer@gmail.com
https://socratic.org/questions/some-of-the-best-aphorisms-of-hippocrates