Pierre Belon
Pierre Belon was a French traveler, naturalist and diplomat. Like many others of the Renaissance period, he studied and wrote on a range of topics including ichthyology, botany, comparative anatomy and Egyptology. He is sometimes known as Pierre Belon du Mans, or, in the Latin in which his works appeared, ivan Pavlov called him the prophet of comparative anatomy. Belon was born in 1517 at the hamlet of Souletière near Cérans-Foulletourte and his family was not wealthy and as a boy, he worked as an apprentice at an apothecary at Foulletourte. He worked as an apothecary to the bishop of Clermont and he travelled through Flanders and England, taking a keen interest in zoology. When he returned to Auvergne, he was supported by René du Bellay, bishop of Le Mans and he travelled around Germany with Cordus and on his arrival at Thionville, was arrested on suspicions that he was a Lutheran. He was released by the interventions of a certain Dehamme who was an admirer of his friend from Paris, around 1542 he studied medicine at Paris, and obtained a licentiate in medicine although he never took the degree of doctor.
With the recommendation of Duprat, he became an apothecary to Cardinal François de Tournon, under this patronage, he was able to undertake extensive scientific voyages. Starting in 1546, he travelled through Greece, Asia Minor, Egypt and Palestine and he hoped to find the remains of Homers Troy in the Levant. A full account of his Observations on this journey, with illustrations, was published in Paris,1553, returning to the household of Cardinal de Tournon at Rome for the Papal conclave, 1549-1550, Belon encountered the naturalists Guillaume Rondelet and Hippolyte Salviani. He returned to Paris with his copious notes and began to publish, in 1557 he travelled again, this time in northern Italy, the Dauphiné and Auvergne. He was assassinated one evening in April 1564, when coming through the Bois on his return from Paris, Belon was typical of the renaissance scholar and took an interest in all kinds of good disciplines in his lifetime. He was interested in zoology and classical Antiquity, besides the narrative of his travels he wrote several scientific works of considerable value, particularly the Histoire naturelle des estranges poissons, De aquatilibus.
His works were translated by Carolus Clusius, and he was held in high authority by Ulisse Aldrovandi, in his LHistoire de la nature des oyseaux he included two figures of the skeletons of humans and birds marking the homologous bones. This is widely used as one of the earliest ideas on comparative anatomy, all of these were first published in Paris. 1553, De arboribus Coniferis, Resiniferis aliisque semper virentibus, a basic text on conifers and evergreens. 1553 De admirabili operi antiquorum et rerum suspiciendarum praestantia, treating the funerary customs of Antiquity, in three volumes, of which separate titles head the second, on mummification and third. 1553, Les observations de plusieurs singularitez et choses memorables trouvées en Grèce, Judée, Egypte,1555, revised edition of the Observations, it was translated into Latin for an international readership by Clusius,1589
Dead Sea
The Dead Sea, is a salt lake bordered by Jordan to the east and Israel and Palestine to the west. Its surface and shores are 430.5 metres below sea level, the Dead Sea is 304 m deep, the deepest hypersaline lake in the world. With 34. 2% salinity, it is 9.6 times as salty as the ocean and this salinity makes for a harsh environment in which plants and animals cannot flourish, hence its name. The Dead Sea is 50 kilometres long and 15 kilometres wide at its widest point and it lies in the Jordan Rift Valley and its main tributary is the Jordan River. The Dead Sea has attracted visitors from around the Mediterranean basin for thousands of years and it was one of the worlds first health resorts, and it has been the supplier of a wide variety of products, from asphalt for Egyptian mummification to potash for fertilizers. People use the salt and the minerals from the Dead Sea to create cosmetics, the Dead Sea water has a density of 1.24 kg/litre, which makes swimming similar to floating. The Dead Sea is receding at an alarming rate, multiple canals and pipelines were proposed to reduce its recession, which had begun causing many problems.
The Red Sea–Dead Sea Water Conveyance project, carried out by Jordan, will provide water to neighboring countries, the first phase of the project is scheduled to begin in 2018 and be completed in 2021. In Hebrew, the Dead Sea is Yām ha-Melaḥ, meaning sea of salt, the Bible uses this term alongside two others, the Sea of the Arabah, and the Eastern Sea. The designation Dead Sea never appears in the Bible, in prose sometimes the term Yām ha-Māvet is used, due to the scarcity of aquatic life there. In Arabic the Dead Sea is called al-Bahr al-Mayyit, or less commonly baḥrᵘ lūṭᵃ, another historic name in Arabic was the Sea of Zoʼar, after a nearby town in biblical times. The Greeks called it Lake Asphaltites, the Dead Sea is an endorheic lake located in the Jordan Rift Valley, a geographic feature formed by the Dead Sea Transform. This left lateral-moving transform fault lies along the plate boundary between the African Plate and the Arabian Plate. It runs between the East Anatolian Fault zone in Turkey and the end of the Red Sea Rift offshore of the southern tip of Sinai.
It is here that the Upper Jordan River/Sea of Galilee/Lower Jordan River water system comes to an end. The Jordan River is the major water source flowing into the Dead Sea, although there are small perennial springs under and around the Dead Sea, forming pools. The Mujib River, biblical Arnon, is one the larger sources of the Dead Sea other than the Jordan. The Wadi Mujib valley,420 m below the sea level in the southern of Jordan valley, is a biosphere reserve, other more substantial sources are Wadi Darajeh /Nahal Dragot, and Nahal Arugot
Medicine in the medieval Islamic world
Islamic medicine preserved and developed the medical knowledge of classical antiquity. During the post-classical era, Islamic medicine was the most advanced in the world, integrating concepts of the ancient Greek, many aspects of their writings are still worth reading even today, and their memory is held in high respect by the physicians of today. Medicine was a part of medieval Islamic culture. The works of ancient Greek and Roman physicians Hippocrates, ophthalmology has been described as the most successful branch of medicine researched at the time, with the works of Ibn Al-Haitham remaining an authority in the field until early modern times. Early on, the study and practice of medicine was understood as an act of piety, founded on the principles of Imaan and Tawakkul. Muhammads opinions on issues, and habits with regard to leading a healthy life, were collected early on. Anas writes about two physicians who had treated him by cauterization and mentions that the wanted to avoid this treatment and had asked for alternative treatments.
Later on, there are reports of the caliph ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān fixing his teeth with a made of gold. He mentions that the habit of cleaning ones teeth with a wooden toothpick dates back to pre-islamic times. The Prophetic medicine was mentioned by the classical authors of Islamic medicine. In his Kitab as-Ṣaidana from the 10. /11, century, Al-Biruni refers to collected poems and other works dealing with, and commenting on, the materia medica of the old Arabs. The most famous physician was Al-Ḥariṯ ben-Kalada aṯ-Ṯaqafī, who lived at the time as the prophet. He is supposed to have been in touch with the Academy of Gondishapur and he reportedly had a conversation once with Khosrow I Anushirvan about medical topics. The translation of the capital of the emerging Islamic world to Damascus may have facilitated this contact, the names of two Christian physicians are known, Ibn Aṯāl worked at the court of Muawiyah I, the founder of the Umayyad dynasty. The caliph abused his knowledge in order to get rid of some of his enemies by way of poisoning, Abu l-Ḥakam, who was responsible for the preparation of drugs, was employed by Muawiah.
His son and great-grandson were serving the Umayyad and these sources testify to the fact that the physicians of the emerging islamic society were familiar with the classical medical traditions already at the times of the Umayyads. The medical knowledge likely arrived from Alexandria, and was transferred by Syrian scholars, or translators. Very few sources provide information about how the expanding Islamic society received any medical knowledge, a physician called Abdalmalik ben Abgar al-Kinānī from Kufa in Iraq is supposed to have worked at the medical school of Alexandria before he joined ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīzs court
Desiccation
Desiccation is the state of extreme dryness, or the process of extreme drying. A desiccant is a substance that induces or sustains such a state in its local vicinity in a moderately sealed container. A desiccator is a glass or plastic container used in practical chemistry for making or keeping small amounts of materials very dry. The material is placed on a shelf, and an agent or desiccant. Often some sort of humidity indicator is included in the desiccator to show, by color changes and these indicators are in the form of indicator plugs or indicator cards. The active chemical is cobalt chloride, when it bonds with two water molecules, it turns purple. Further hydration results in the pink hexaaquacobalt chloride complex 2+, ecologists frequently study and assess various organisms susceptibility to desiccation. Several bacterial species have shown to accumulate DNA damages upon desiccation. Deinococcus radiodurans is extremely resistant to ionizing radiation, the functions necessary to survive ionizing radiation are necessary to survive prolonged desiccation.
Radiation resistance is considered to be a consequence of the organism’s evolutionary adaptation to dehydration. The chromosomal DNA from desiccated D. radiodurans revealed increased DNA double-strand breaks, DNA double-strand breaks are repaired principally by a RecA-dependent recombination process that requires the presence of two genome copies. By this process D. radiodurans can survive thousands of double-strand breaks per cell, NHEJ appears to be the preferred pathway for repairing double-strand breaks caused by desiccation during stationary phase. NHEJ can repair double-strand breaks even when only one chromosome is present in a cell, upon exposure to extreme dryness, Bacillus subtilis spores acquire DNA-double strand breaks and DNA-protein crosslinks. In broadcast engineering, a desiccator may be used to pressurize the feedline of a high-power transmitter, because it carries a large amount of energy from the transmitter to the antenna, the feedline must have low dielectric losses. Because it must be lightweight so as not to overload the radio tower, since moisture can condense in these lines, desiccated air or nitrogen gas is pumped in.
This pressure keeps water or other dampness from coming in the line at any point along its length, list of desiccants Hygroscopy Mummy A Desiccant Requirements Calculator
Medieval Latin
Despite the clerical origin of many of its authors, medieval Latin should not be confused with Ecclesiastical Latin. There is no consensus on the exact boundary where Late Latin ends. Medieval Latin had a vocabulary, which freely borrowed from other sources. Greek provided much of the vocabulary of Christianity. The various Germanic languages spoken by the Germanic tribes, who invaded southern Europe, were major sources of new words. Germanic leaders became the rulers of parts of the Roman Empire that they conquered, other more ordinary words were replaced by coinages from Vulgar Latin or Germanic sources because the classical words had fallen into disuse. Latin was spread to such as Ireland and Germany. Works written in the lands, where Latin was a language with no relation to the local vernacular, influenced the vocabulary. English words like abstract, communicate, probable, the high point of the development of medieval Latin as a literary language came with the Carolingian renaissance, a rebirth of learning kindled under the patronage of Charlemagne, king of the Franks.
On the other hand, strictly speaking there was no form of medieval Latin. Every Latin author in the period spoke Latin as a second language, with varying degrees of fluency, and syntax, grammar. For instance, rather than following the classical Latin practice of placing the verb at the end. Unlike classical Latin, where esse was the auxiliary verb, medieval Latin writers might use habere as an auxiliary, similar to constructions in Germanic. The accusative and infinitive construction in classical Latin was often replaced by a clause introduced by quod or quia. This is almost identical, for example, to the use of que in similar constructions in French. In every age from the late 8th century onwards, there were learned writers who were familiar enough with classical syntax to be aware that these forms and usages were wrong, however the use of quod to introduce subordinate clauses was especially pervasive and is found at all levels. That resulted in two features of Medieval Latin compared with Classical Latin.
First, many attempted to show off their knowledge of Classical Latin by using rare or archaic constructions
Medieval medicine of Western Europe
In the Early Middle Ages, following the fall of the Western Roman Empire, standard medical knowledge was based chiefly upon surviving Greek and Roman texts, preserved in monasteries and elsewhere. Many simply placed their hopes in the church and God to heal all their sicknesses, the efficacy of cures was similarly bound in the beliefs of patient and doctor rather than empirical evidence, so that remedia physicalia were often subordinate to spiritual intervention. The Western medical tradition often traces roots directly to the early Greek civilization, the Greeks certainly laid the foundation for Western medical practice but much more of Western medicine can be traced to the Middle East and Celtic cultures. The Greek medical foundation comes from a collection of writings known today as the Hippocratic Corpus. Remnants of the Hippocratic Corpus survive in modern medicine in forms like the “Hippocratic Oath” as in to “Do No Harm. ”The Hippocratic Corpus, popularly attributed to an ancient Greek practitioner known as Hippocrates, lays out the basic approach to health care.
Greek philosophers viewed the body as a system that reflects the workings of nature. The body, as a reflection of natural forces, contained four elemental properties expressed to the Greeks as the four humors, the humors represented fire, air and water through the properties of hot, cold and moist, respectively. Health in the body relied on keeping these humors in balance within each person. Maintaining the balance of humors within a patient occurred in several ways, an initial examination took place as standard for a physician to properly evaluate the patient. The patients home climate, their diet, and astrological charts were regarded during consultation. The heavens influenced every person in different ways by influencing elements connected to certain humors, the physician could determine which humor was unbalanced in the patient and prescribe a new diet to restore that balance. Diet not only included food to eat or avoid but an exercise regiment, Hippocratic medicine represented learned medical practice beginning with the Hippocratic Corpus having been written down, therefore requiring practitioners to be literate.
The written treatises within the Corpus are varied, incorporating medical doctrine from any source the Greeks came into contact with and dissection yielded much knowledge of the human body that Hippocratic physicians employed alongside their methods of balancing humors in patients. The combination of knowledge in diet and medication formed the foundation of medical learning upon which Galen would greatly contribute. In Homers Iliad and Odyssey the gods are implicated as the cause of plagues or widespread disease and this religious side of healing clearly manifested in the cult of Asclepius, whom Homer regarded as the great physician, and was deified in the third and fourth century BC. Hundreds of temples devoted to Asclepius have been throughout the Greek. Healing visions and dreams formed the foundation for the process as the person seeking treatment from Asclepius slept in a special dormitory. The healing occurred either in the dream or advice from the dream could be used to seek out proper treatment for illness elsewhere
Ayurveda
Ayurveda, or Ayurveda medicine, is a system of medicine with historical roots in the Indian subcontinent. Globalized and modernized practices derived from Ayurveda traditions are a type of complementary or alternative medicine, in the Western world, Ayurveda therapies and practices have been integrated in general wellness applications and as well in some cases in medical use. The main classical Ayurveda texts begin with accounts of the transmission of knowledge from the Gods to sages. In Sushruta Samhita, Sushruta wrote that Dhanvantari, Hindu god of Ayurveda, incarnated himself as a king of Varanasi and taught medicine to a group of physicians, Ayurveda therapies have varied and evolved over more than two millennia. Therapies are typically based on complex compounds and metal substances. Ancient Ayurveda texts taught surgical techniques, including rhinoplasty, kidney stone extractions, other researchers consider it a protoscience, or trans-science system instead. Close to 21% of Ayurveda U. S.
and Indian-manufactured patent medicines sold through the Internet were found to contain levels of heavy metals, specifically lead, mercury. The public health implications of such metallic contaminants in India are unknown, some scholars assert that Ayurveda originated in prehistoric times, and that some of the concepts of Ayurveda have existed from the time of the Indus Valley Civilization or even earlier. Humoral balance is emphasized, and suppressing natural urges is considered unhealthy, Ayurveda names three elemental substances, the doshas, and states that a balance of the doshas results in health, while imbalance results in disease. Ayurveda has eight components, which are derived from classical Sanskrit literature. Ayurveda practitioners had developed various medicinal preparations and surgical procedures by the medieval period, the earliest classical Sanskrit works on Ayurveda describe medical science as being divided into eight components. This characterization of the art, the medicine that has eight components, is first found in the Sanskrit epic the Mahābhārata.
The central theoretical ideas of Ayurveda developed in the mid-first millennium BCE, balance is emphasized, and suppressing natural urges is considered unhealthy and claimed to lead to illness. For example, to suppress sneezing is said to give rise to shoulder pain. However, people are cautioned to stay within the limits of reasonable balance, for example, emphasis is placed on moderation of food intake and sexual intercourse. Ayurveda names seven basic tissues, which are plasma, muscles, bone, like the medicine of classical antiquity, Ayurveda has historically divided bodily substances into five classical elements eliminates toxic elements from the body. Panchakarma includes Vamana, Basti and Raktamokshana and it is preceded by Poorvakarma as a preparatory step, and is followed by Paschatkarma and Peyadikarma. Based on the World Health Assembly resolution on traditional medicine, the WHO has established a traditional medicine strategy, the first previous global strategy was published in 2002 and dealt especially with herbal medicines
Mummy
Some authorities restrict the use of the term to bodies deliberately embalmed with chemicals, but the use of the word to cover accidentally desiccated bodies goes back to at least 1615 CE. Mummies of humans and other animals have found on every continent. Over one million animal mummies have been found in Egypt, many of which are cats, in addition to the well-known mummies of ancient Egypt, deliberate mummification was a feature of several ancient cultures in areas of America and Asia with very dry climates. The Spirit Cave mummies of Fallon, Nevada in North America were accurately dated at more than 9,400 years old. Before this discovery, the oldest known deliberate mummy was a child, one of the Chinchorro mummies found in the Camarones Valley, which dates around 5050 BCE. The oldest known naturally mummified corpse is a severed head dated as 6,000 years old. These substances were defined as mummia, the OED defines a mummy as the body of a human being or animal embalmed as a preparation for burial, citing sources from 1615 CE onward.
However, Chambers Cyclopædia and the Victorian zoologist Francis Trevelyan Buckland define a mummy as follows, applied to the frozen carcase of an animal imbedded in prehistoric snow. Wasps of the genus Aleiodes are known as mummy wasps because they wrap their prey as mummies. While interest in the study of mummies dates as far back as Ptolemaic Greece, prior to this, many rediscovered mummies were sold as curiosities or for use in pseudoscientific novelties such as mummia. The first modern scientific examinations of mummies began in 1901, conducted by professors at the English-language Government School of Medicine in Cairo, Egypt. The first X-ray of a mummy came in 1903, when professors Grafton Elliot Smith, British chemist Alfred Lucas applied chemical analyses to Egyptian mummies during this same period, which returned many results about the types of substances used in embalming. Lucas made significant contributions to the analysis of Tutankhamun in 1922, pathological study of mummies saw varying levels of popularity throughout the 20th century.
In 1992, the First World Congress on Mummy Studies was held in Puerto de la Cruz on Tenerife in the Canary Islands, more than 300 scientists attended the Congress to share nearly 100 years of collected data on mummies. This was not possible prior to the Congress due to the unique, in more recent years, CT scanning has become an invaluable tool in the study of mummification by allowing researchers to digitally unwrap mummies without risking damage to the body. The level of detail in such scans is so intricate that small linens used in areas such as the nostrils can be digitally reconstructed in 3-D. Such modelling has been utilized to perform autopsies on mummies to determine cause of death and lifestyle. Mummies are typically divided into one of two categories, anthropogenic or spontaneous
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a period in European history, from the 14th to the 17th century, regarded as the cultural bridge between the Middle Ages and modern history. It started as a movement in Italy in the Late Medieval period and spread to the rest of Europe. This new thinking became manifest in art, politics, Early examples were the development of perspective in oil painting and the recycled knowledge of how to make concrete. Although the invention of movable type sped the dissemination of ideas from the 15th century. In politics, the Renaissance contributed to the development of the customs and conventions of diplomacy, the Renaissance began in Florence, in the 14th century. Other major centres were northern Italian city-states such as Venice, Milan, the word Renaissance, literally meaning Rebirth in French, first appeared in English in the 1830s. The word occurs in Jules Michelets 1855 work, Histoire de France, the word Renaissance has been extended to other historical and cultural movements, such as the Carolingian Renaissance and the Renaissance of the 12th century.
The Renaissance was a movement that profoundly affected European intellectual life in the early modern period. Renaissance scholars employed the humanist method in study, and searched for realism, however, a subtle shift took place in the way that intellectuals approached religion that was reflected in many other areas of cultural life. In addition, many Greek Christian works, including the Greek New Testament, were back from Byzantium to Western Europe. Political philosophers, most famously Niccolò Machiavelli, sought to describe life as it really was. Others see more competition between artists and polymaths such as Brunelleschi, Ghiberti and Masaccio for artistic commissions as sparking the creativity of the Renaissance. Yet it remains much debated why the Renaissance began in Italy, several theories have been put forward to explain its origins. During the Renaissance and art went hand in hand, Artists depended entirely on patrons while the patrons needed money to foster artistic talent. Wealth was brought to Italy in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries by expanding trade into Asia, silver mining in Tyrol increased the flow of money.
Luxuries from the Eastern world, brought home during the Crusades, increased the prosperity of Genoa, unlike with Latin texts, which had been preserved and studied in Western Europe since late antiquity, the study of ancient Greek texts was very limited in medieval Western Europe. One of the greatest achievements of Renaissance scholars was to bring this entire class of Greek cultural works back into Western Europe for the first time since late antiquity, Arab logicians had inherited Greek ideas after they had invaded and conquered Egypt and the Levant. Their translations and commentaries on these ideas worked their way through the Arab West into Spain and Sicily and this work of translation from Islamic culture, though largely unplanned and disorganized, constituted one of the greatest transmissions of ideas in history
Crusades
The First Crusade arose after a call to arms in a 1095 sermon by Pope Urban II. Urban urged military support for the Byzantine Empire and its Emperor, Alexios I, the response to Urbans preaching by people of many different classes across Western Europe established the precedent for Crusades. Volunteers became Crusaders by taking a vow and receiving plenary indulgences from the church. Some were hoping for apotheosis at Jerusalem, or forgiveness from God for all their sins, others participated to satisfy feudal obligations, gain glory and honour, or find opportunities for economic and political gain. Many modern Historians have polarised opinions of the Crusaders behaviour under Papal sanction, to some it was incongruous with the stated aims and implied moral authority of the papacy and the Crusades, to the extent that on occasions that the Pope excommunicated Crusaders. Crusaders often pillaged as they travelled, while their leaders retained control of captured territory rather than returning it to the Byzantines.
During the Peoples Crusade thousands of Jews were murdered in what is now called the Rhineland massacres, Constantinople was sacked during the Fourth Crusade rendering the reunification of Christendom impossible. These tales consequently galvanised medieval romance and literature, but the Crusades reinforced the connection between Western Christendom and militarism. Crusade is not a term, instead the terms iter for journey or peregrinatio for pilgrimage were used. Not until the word crucesignatus for one who was signed with the cross was adopted at the close of the century was specific terminology developed. The Middle English equivalents were derived from old French, croiserie in the 13th–15th centuries, croisade appeared in English c1575, and continued to be the leading form till c1760. By convention historians adopt the term for the Christian holy wars from 1095, the Crusades in the Holy Land are traditionally counted as nine distinct campaigns, numbered from the First Crusade of 1095–99 to the Ninth Crusade of 1271/2.
Usage of the term Crusade may differ depending on the author, pluralists use the term Crusade of any campaign explicitly sanctioned by the reigning Pope. This reflects the view of the Roman Catholic Church that every military campaign given Papal sanction is equally valid as a Crusade, regardless of its cause, generalists see Crusades as any and all holy wars connected with the Latin Church and fought in defence of their faith. Popularists limit the Crusades to only those that were characterised by popular groundswells of religious fervour – that is, only the First Crusade, Medieval Muslim historiographers such as Ali ibn al-Athir refer to the Crusades as the Frankish Wars. The term used in modern Arabic, ḥamalāt ṣalībiyya حملات صليبية, campaigns of the cross, is a loan translation of the term Crusade as used in Western historiography. The Islamic prophet Muhammad founded Islam in the Arabian Peninsula, the resulting unified polity in the seventh and eighth centuries led to a rapid expansion of Arab power.
This influence stretched from the northwest Indian subcontinent, across Central Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, southern Italy, tolerance and political relationships between the Arabs and the Christian states of Europe waxed and waned
Ancient Greek medicine
Ancient Greek medicine was a compilation of theories and practices that were constantly expanding through new ideologies and trials. Many components were considered in ancient Greek medicine, intertwining the spiritual with the physical, the ancient Greeks believed health was affected by the humors, geographic location, social class, trauma and mindset. Early on, ancient Greeks believed that illnesses were divine punishments, humorism refers to blood, yellow bile, black bile and phlegm. It was theorized that gender played a role in medicine because some diseases, diet was thought to be an issue as well and might be affected by a lack of access to adequate nourishment. Trauma, such as that suffered by gladiators, from dog bites or other injuries, played a role in relating to understanding anatomy. Additionally, there was significant focus on the beliefs and mind set of the patient in the diagnosis and it was recognized that the mind played a role in healing, or that it might be the sole basis for the illness.
Ancient Greek medicine began to revolve around the theory of humors, humoral theory states that good health comes from perfect balance of the four humors blood, yellow bile, and black bile. Consequently, poor health resulted from improper balance of the four humors, known as the Father of Modern Medicine, established a medical school at Cos sin and is the most important figure in ancient Greek medicine. Hippocrates and his students documented numerous illnesses in the Hippocratic Corpus, and developed the Hippocratic Oath for physicians, the earliest known Greek medical school opened in Cnidus in 700 BC. Alcmaeon, author of the first anatomical compilation, worked at this school, knowledge of the field of medicine in ancient Greece during the Pre-Hippocratic era is relatively limited and most information we have comes from Homer and his epics. Throughout his stories, Homer used a myriad of medical and anatomical descriptions, Homer has been attributed with moving his society towards humanism, which led to the interest in medicine and scientific approaches to it.
It was at point that the people of ancient Greece started to blame less on the gods and to look for more practical reasons. In order for them to be cured they would have to sacrifice to him and appease the angered god, which when done successfully lifted the plague. Based on this, historians believe that ancient Greeks saw disease as a work of angered gods, another way ancient Greeks sought relief from their ailments was through help from the healing god Asclepius. Although disease was seen as a work of the gods, cases of injury and trauma were dealt with more practically, the Achaeans had dedicated healers, specifically Machaon, who was often described dealing with the injuries associated with war. The treatments used were rudimentary, and consisted mainly of herbs, bandages. The herbs used were generally meant to be analgesics or used for coagulation to prevent bleeding out on the battlefield. Along with practical treatment, it was common for the healers to offer a prayer along with treatment because there was still a belief that gods could and would heal at their discretion
