Why Was It Necessary For Great Physician Hippocrates To Eat Earwax?

AncientPages.com - Was it really necessary for great physician Hippocrates to eat earwax? Why did he do it?

Hippocrates of Kos (c 360-375 BC) was known as the Father of Medicine. He was a Greek physician, one of the most outstanding figures in the history of medicine.

He came from a family of doctors and underwent the medical training at the local “asclepeion” temple – where priests treated the sick people using snake worship, religious magic, dream interpretation and other superstitions. Hippocrates was against it!

Hippocrates treating his patient.

He rejected their methods and supernatural explanations for diseases, and argued for a rational explanation for them. He was convinced that a disease was a natural process (a part of nature) and the symptoms and signs of it, were caused by the natural reactions of the body.

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Therefore medical observation should be performed scientifically with no relation to  supernatural explanations. Disease was the result of imbalances in these elements caused by diet, climate, living habits of a sick and had absolutely nothing to do with magic or interfering of gods.

But how could such a good physician as Hippocrates know, how to diagnose what troubled a patient?

He recommended the analysis of urine, vomit, sweat and earwax and was even prepared to taste some of them.

Hippocrates suggested that bitter earwax was a sign of good health, but sweet earwax was a sign of illness.

He was against harmful practices and barbaric treatments of patients and preferred a cautious, gentle approach to a patient and his illness. He demanded high standards of ethics from those who followed his teachings.

Hippocrates’ great tradition survived until today. All modern doctors continuously honor Hippocrates’ name by taking a Hippocratic Oath to do no harm.

It is believed that the Hippocratic Oath is the first version of the code of ethics for physicians.

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