A Roman bronze scalpel, about nine centimetres long
Bronze scalpel, 1st–2nd century CE
Marked Kos

SubjectIn outline · lessons being written

Hippocrates to Galen

Greek doctors began to explain illness by nature rather than the gods. Their ideas, from the four humours to the Hippocratic Oath, were developed by Galen in Rome and taught in Europe and the Islamic world for 1,500 years.

Date
About 460 BC to AD 216VI · The classical world
Place
Kos · Epidaurus · Pergamon · RomeEurope, The Middle East
Laid out as
A theme across timeOne idea followed through the eras it crosses.
Lessons
6 planned, none written yet

The lessons we plan

Titles may change as they are written

  1. IHippocrates of Kos
  2. IIThe four humours
  3. IIIThe oath
  4. IVTemples of healing
  5. VGalen and the gladiators
  6. VIRoman surgical tools

Still to come

The people and objects these lessons will cover

People

  • Hippocrates
  • Herophilus
  • Galen
  • Agnodice (in legend)

Objects

  • Surgical instruments from Pompeii
  • Votive body parts

Where it sits

All of human history, era by era

Early human ancestryOur species and the Old Stone AgeFarming and the New Stone AgeFirst cities and the Bronze AgeThe Iron Age and growing statesThe classical worldAfter the empiresMedieval networks and empiresOceans crossedRevolutions and the first factoriesIndustry, empire and world warThe world since 1945

460 BC to AD 216. Each era is drawn the same width, so the earliest are squeezed: era II alone is over 300,000 years.

Nearby in time and place

This page is an outline. The summary above is a starting point; each lesson, when it is written, will give its sources, its pictures and where historians disagree. Spotted a mistake?