Classical Ideas of Physiology and Pathology: Understandings of the Living Body in the Hippocratic Corpus

Abstract

The medical texts of the Hippocratic Corpus (fifth to third centuries BCE) were composed by different authors, each with their own ideas about how the human body functions and how it changes in illness and due to injury. But despite diverging views on the functions of the body in the Corpus, the treatises also share a number of fundamental concepts on the body’s nature, both in its healthy and diseased or damaged states. This thesis analyses the different ways the authors of the Hippocratic treatises understood the physiology and pathology of the living body, including the body’s composition, components, and processes, and how these often-eclectic medical ideas shape essential aspects of Hippocratic medicine. The project is guided by two important questions: what did the Hippocratic authors know about the body, and how did they know this information. This study aims to contribute to current scholarship on ancient medicine by offering a detailed foundation of physiological and pathological concepts in the Corpus for further studies on the reasoning behind Hippocratic therapies and treatments of diseases and injuries.