Hippocrates Invented Nothing: Popular Therapies in Healing Inscriptions

Abstract

It has long been thought that the Hippocratic medicine in the Antiquity was opposed to the divine medicine: one was rational, the other was a mixture of superstition and religion. This article attempts to show by some examples from ancient Greek text sources that both medicines, one of the gods and one of the men, have exploited the same empirical funds from traditional care techniques. So we must now nuance the too schematic division between the two medicines.

Keywords

• Asclepius
• Greek Antiquity
• Popular medecine
• Divine medecine
• Epigraphy.