Soham Gandhi HIST382 Essay 1 3/5/09

Throughout history, many have envisioned the world of medicine through different lenses.

Hippocrates and William Harvey are two people who shared some common understandings and

some contradictory beliefs of the human body through the texts they wrote. Although both

Hippocrates' "The Nature of Man" and William Harvey's "On the Motion of the Heart" present

blood on a common ground, they magnify blood at completely extreme proportions of essence

relative to the body through experimentation of bodies and organs, observation of mechanisms,

trial and error, and conclusion of data.

Hippocrates passed on many beliefs and knowledge to his society through the writings people

based on from his work. His followers decided to publish his ideas and theories through manuals,

textbooks, lectures, and notes. Thus, the "Hippocratic corpus" was formed as the set of all these,

self-refuting at times, unique materials. Although the "Hippocratic corpus" consisted of valuable

information, it was not all written by Hippocrates himself. But what Hippocrates did lay out was

his knowledge of diet and clinical examination through lectures and teachings.

In contrast, William Harvey, advantageous in living during a more modern and knowledgeable

time than Hippocrates, initially did not inspect animal experiments by other people's books but

by frequent experimentation. He encountered many difficulties in answering his questions when

he performed experiments on animals because his initial purpose was to discover motions and

functions. For example, he struggled with discovering the moments of which systole and diastole

or location of dilatation and constriction occur taking place because of the natural speed of

movement (RM 73). He became confused when stumped upon not being able to recognize any

patterns. Thus, he became indecisive towards concluding for himself and believing others.

However, he carefully fixed his struggle and conducted frequent experiments, on various

animals, and comparing many observations (RM 73). Similar to Hippocrates, This procedure led
Soham Gandhi HIST382 Essay 1 3/5/09

him to discuss his thoughts through his lectures.

Hippocrates observed and recorded such as symptoms, diseases, and histories, leading him to

recognize frequent patterns. The patterns led to the conclusions of how natural sciences, such as

seasons, affected health. He developed a theory from which congregated copious symptoms into

one. This theory simplified the body to consist of "Four Humours": blood, phlegm, yellow bile,

and black bile. These four elemental fluids were known to cause entail homeostasis. Essentially,

if there is any imbalance in the four fluids, then disease and/or pain are susceptible as an effect.

Moreover, Hippocrates significantly understood logically the effect any imbalance has on "not

only the part from which it has come, but also that where it collects and is present in excess"

(RM 43). Hippocrates acknowledged the effects on such portals because, in essence, they too

consist of the fluid. His skill in holistic comprehension allowed him to incorporate

two different reasons why diseases occur: season and predisposition.

It was best for Hippocrates to consider seasons as a factor for the excretion of the Four

Humours through recognizing patterns. Understanding the physics and chemistry of the Four

Humours was crucial in order to justify his conclusion. By comparing the coldness of phlegm,

bile, and blood, he was able to recognize that phlegm is the coldest of those three humours. It

was also realized that phlegm is the most viscous and is brought up with the most force of any

other substance except for black bile. Hippocrates identified that the greater the force exerted on

a substance, the warmer the substance will become. However, phlegm, the coldest substance, is

most abundant in the body during the winter due to its compatibility in the cold season. Thus in

the winter, in order for the person to remove his or her extraneous phlegm, a great amount of

force is required to exert. Hippocrates stated that it is commonly seen in the wintertime people

spitting and blowing their noses. Just like winter, there exist other seasons, but they are warmer,
Soham Gandhi HIST382 Essay 1 3/5/09

which means they exhibit slightly different properties as Hippocrates proved.

Spring is the season that both follows and is warmer than winter. Noticing that coldness, the

lack of heat, decreases in intensity and rainfall becomes present, Hippocrates proposed that the

quantity of blood increases, just as during the wintertime phlegm does. He told that this time of

year streams out wetness and hotness directly affecting blood. The symptoms he said

were prevalent during spring were having a ruddy complexion and the liability to dysentery and

epitasis. Although the Greek physician, also titled the father of medicine, did not support much

physics and chemistry in detail for this particular season, he did know concrete differences

between the seasons.

As the spring transitions into summer, bile is the new center of attention. The father of

medicine distinctly located the symptoms of bile vomiting and bile excretion protruding during

summer and autumn. Also, he concluded that fevers and complexions were not prominent in the

summer. Finally he declares that in the summertime the phlegm is most weak due to the climate

consisting of dryness and exuberant heat, the least comfortable habitat for this Humour.

As the final season, autumn, comes about, dryness hovers the air. Hippocrates mentions that

this dryness affects the body by cooling it. Black bile becomes the strongest for it is best suited

in its environment being the thickest of the Four Humours. Subsequently, as autumn turns into

winter, both black bile and phlegm cool, but black bile decreases and phlegm increases.

Hippocrates sets "the amount of rain and the length of the nights" (RM 46) at fault. Not only

could Hippocrates see how weather impacts physiology but also how the position of the Earth in

its revolution impacts the weather holistically. This holistic application was not easy to conclude;

however, Hippocrates nevertheless made it happen.

Harvey simply focused on blood as the main element and its reason for circulating through
Soham Gandhi HIST382 Essay 1 3/5/09

observation. He demonstrated this by explaining the circulation of the blood through means of

including different vessels in which blood flows and their respective sizes. This indeed aided in

outlining where and to which vessel the blood flows. However, because he realized that when

blood copiously comes to the heart (vena cava and right auricle), outflows through the arteries,

and refluxes through the veins, he knew the blood could not be supplied by the food consumed.

Thus, he concluded that blood in animals constantly circulates due to pumping nature of the

heart. Harvey was able to conclude a biological process through observation, of vessels in

animals and the pertinent quantitative aspects.

One important principle that Hippocrates practiced, called the principle of healing, led him to

generalize the cure for symptoms. This was used to treat patients with a particular disease. A

disease consists of an imbalance in something. So Hippocrates perceived this imbalance as the

opportunity to treat the disease via principle of opposition to the cause of the disease. For

example, fasting cures over-eating, and starvation is cured by increasing eating. Additionally,

diseases caused by exertion are cured by rest, laziness by exertion. The common theme is that the

cause of the disease should be counteracted with its complete opposite. Hippocrates contributed

this process as the principle of healing.

William Harvey, approaching differently, practiced frequently on experiments. Unlike

Hippocrates, Harvey discovered many principles through mathematics. For example, through

experimenting with the heart, he calculated the amount of fluid per heartbeat and converted it

into the heartbeat rate per minute (RM 68). Realizing that the pores in the septum that Galen had

declared to society were nowhere found only inspired him. Similarly, this way of learning

allowed him to constantly have unanswered questions, which led him to seek for their respective

answers through experimentation, observation, and reason, not by conducting principles of

Soham Gandhi HIST382 Essay 1 3/5/09

healing.

In conclusion, the methods by which Hippocrates and William Harvey used to understand the

way things work were essential in establishing diverse knowledge. Those methods varied

through experimentation, observation, pattern recognizing, trial and error, and anatomical

speculation. Perhaps a combination of all these methods could aid in the production of an

ultimate cure in maladies known to have no cure in modern times.