Hippocrates

Hippocrates of Cos (c. 460 BC–380 BC) was an ancient Greek physician, commonly regarded as one of the most outstanding figures in medicine of all time; he has been called "the father of medicine." He was a physician from the so-called medical school of Kos, and may have been a pupil of Herodicus. Writings attributed to him (Corpus hippocraticum, or "Hippocratic writings") rejected the superstition and magic of primitive "medicine" and laid the foundations of medicine as a branch of science.

The "portrait" of Hippocrates

The purely conventional iconography of Greek poets and philosophers were set in the "portrait" busts, (illustration, above right), produced in series to decorate the villas of the Roman cultured class. The changing careers of these idealized "character" images have been studied by Paul Zanker, The Mask of Socrates: The Image of the Intellectual in Antiquity, translated by Alan Shapiro. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. . See review in Bryn Mawr Classical Review.

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