Sublime

The teachings of antiquity,

the mind was influenced by the body, the doctor had a part to play in teaching virtue.

‘our natures are the physicians of our diseases’,

The true doctor would no longer be an intermediary with the gods but the bedside friend of the sick.

Medicine has offered the promise of ‘the greatest benefit to mankind’, but not always on terms palatable to and compatible with cherished ideals.

‘The art has three factors, the disease, the patient, the physician,’ wrote Hippocrates,

Disease is a social development no less than the medicine that combats it.

The idea of probing into bodies, living and dead (and especially human bodies) with a view to improving medicine is more or less distinctive to the European medical tradition.

were more successful in assisting people to cope with chronic conditions and soothing lesser ailments than in conquering life-threatening infections which became endemic and epidemic in the civilized world: