Medicine After Hippocrates

The Greek writers make numerous references to opium with some evidence that they used species other than P. somniferum. Hippocrates, considered by some to be the father of medicine, rejected the supernatural attributes of opium but acknowledges opium s usefulness as a narcotic, especially in the treatment of certain diseases. It has been claimed that Alexander the Great took opium to Persia and India in 330 BC. The Romans continued the use of opium in medical applications and there is little evidence that addiction was a problem in these ancient cultures. After the rise of Islam, the use of opium in medicine was further developed and documented. At some stage, the Arab spice traders took opium to the Far East and some credited them with introducing it to China. By the middle ages, the drinking of opium mbctures for recreational use is recorded in Persia and India. 

It is well known that Herman Boerhaave, the eighteenth-century instructor of all of Europe (communis Europaepraeceptor), was an ardent supporter of Hippocrates. While historians have discussed Boerhaave s veneration for Hippocrates as the Father of Medicine before, it is less known that Boerhaave also recommended practicing chemistry after the Hippocratical manner. Boerhaave s advice is remarkable since chemistry is alien to the Hippocratic writings. What, I ask in this paper, did Boerhaave mean when speaking about the Hippocratical manner and why did he make this method central to his chemistry What in the Hippocratic corpus was of particular use in the chemical laboratory that attracted Boerhaave How did Hippocrates function as an essential connection between Boerhaave s chemistry and medicine ... 

Of all natural philosophers, Hippocrates best incorporated the Calvinist way of doing research. And it was to Hippocrates, in Boerhaave s words, that all the later authors owed everything that was good in their work. 30 Hence Boerhaave recommended that his students practice chemistry after the Hippocratic manner. This means that Hippocrates was Boerhaave s first and foremost role model in his academic pursuits. So even though Boerhaave presented Francis Bacon as a role model for the natural philosophy of his day (Bacon s experimental method, after all, exactly fitted Boerhaave s Hippocratic model), for Boerhaave it was a Calvinist Hippocrates who, before Bacon, made observation central to medicine, thereby establishing the right method for natural philosophy as a whole.31... 

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