Psychology

Ancient Greek philosophers studied the differences between the mind and the soul and how past experience contributes to behaviour from around 600 BCE. Many of the basic ideas that we investigate in modern psychology may be traced back to two Greek philosophers: Aristotle and Plato.

Hippocrates was a Greek philosopher and physician who has been called ‘the father of medicine’. He and his followers dismissed the idea that illness was simply caused or cured by superstitions, spirits or gods. Instead, he argued for a rational approach to medical treatment based on close observation of the individual patient. However, so little is known about the man himself that some scholars have questioned whether he was a real person at all.

In Hippocratic medicine, effective treatment relied on considering the patient as a whole. Diet, sleep, work and exercise were all seen as important factors that could play a role in producing - and reversing - the imbalance in humours that was believed to result in illness. Diseases were allowed to run their natural course with treatment restricted mainly to the careful use of specific herbal medicines. Surgery was very much seen as a last resort. Hippocrates is believed to have founded a medical school on Kos - the island of his birth - where his students helped to spread his ideas. A collection of ancient written works associated with Hippocrates and his teachings, known as ‘The Hippocratic Corpus’, was a huge influence on the development of medicine in the centuries that followed. The Hippocratic oath was most probably compiled by a number of authors, but echoes elements of his philosophy and has an enduring legacy as the ethical framework for the medical profession.

http://broughttolife.sciencemuseum.org.uk/broughttolife/people/hippocrates

Galen was born in Greece, studied medicine in Egypt and became the most celebrated physician in the Roman Empire. His theories were to dominate Western medical thinking for centuries after his death. A radical and innovative experimenter, he considered dissection a key tool in understanding the human body. Although he was restricted by law to dissecting animals, the three years he spent from 158 CE as physician to the gladiators of his home city of Pergamon were a formative period in his life in medicine. The traumatic injuries he regularly encountered gave Galen the perfect opportunity to extend his practical medical knowledge of the human body.

Galen was greatly influenced by the working methods of Hippocrates and other earlier Greek doctors. He similarly advocated the humoral theory of the body and like Hippocrates he also placed great importance on clinical observation through careful examination of patients and the recording of their symptoms. Galen paid particular attention to an individual’s pulse, monitoring it for abnormalities and using it as a tool to diagnose disease and suggest possible treatments. Feeling a patient’s pulse remains a standard diagnostic procedure to this day.

Galen was a prolific writer. He was widely known in his lifetime, but his prolonged influence owed much to the Islamic scholars who absorbed, reproduced and added to his body of work in the early medieval period. Subsequently these works were retranslated in the West, where they effectively remained beyond criticism until the Renaissance. In that new age of experimentation and investigation the fault lines in much of his work began to be revealed and many of his theories and techniques were gradually replaced or amended by the likes of Vesalius and William Harvey. Despite this, Galen remains a towering figure in the history of medicine.

The anatomist Andreas Vesalius investigated the human body by means of dissection and changed doctors' attitudes towards the role of observation in medicine. Born in Brussels, Vesalius studied medicine at two of the most renowned universities of the time, Paris and Padua. As a student, he was interested in comparing Greek texts with their Arabic translations, and he wrote a thesis on the work of the surgeon Rhazes.

Immediately after gaining his doctorate in 1537, Vesalius was made Professor of Surgery and Anatomy at the University of Padua. In his most important work, On the Fabric of the Human Body of 1543, Vesalius showed that Galen was wrong on some points of human anatomy, and urged doctors to conduct systematic dissections of human corpses themselves. His work was very influential for early modern medicine both because it gave doctors more detailed knowledge of human anatomy and because it encouraged them to investigate critically the claims of ancient medical authorities. He also worked closely with artists, to ensure that illustrations were both accurate and attractive. The conventions he established for the representation of the human body were influential for many centuries to come.

Like many in his family before him, Vesalius became physician to the imperial family, serving Emperor Charles V and his son, Philip II of Spain. Vesalius died while returning from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land (Palestine) in 1564.
http://broughttolife.sciencemuseum.org.uk/broughttolife/people/andreasvesalius

William Harvey was both a physician and natural historian. He is best known for his demonstration of the circulation of the blood. This discovery replaced centuries of theory with evidence based on experiment. Born in Kent, Harvey studied at Cambridge before travelling to Padua, one of the pre-eminent medical schools in Europe (where Vesalius had been Professor of Anatomy). Harvey completed his studies in Padua, and was clearly influenced by the emphasis on experimentation and observation he found there.

On his return to England, Harvey rapidly gained prominence. He became a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 1607, and remained active in the college throughout his life. In 1618 he became physician to King James I, a sign of his eminence in the profession and a measure of the useful social connections he gained through his marriage to Elizabeth Browne, daughter of a physician who served both Queen Elizabeth I and King James I. Harvey continued to serve the royal family all his life. His work on the circulation of blood Exercitatio anatomica de motu cordis et sanguinis in animalibus (An Anatomical Exercise on the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Living Beings) was published in 1628, and dedicated to King Charles I.

Harvey's work on the circulation of blood is fundamental to modern understandings of the role of the heart in the body. Yet his work was not immediately popular. Despite the support of the Royal College of Physicians, many found it hard to accept his ideas as they contradicted the theories behind bloodletting, which was central to medical practice of the time.
http://broughttolife.sciencemuseum.org.uk/broughttolife/people/williamharvey

One of the first anthropologists to draw a distinction between primitive people and scientific thinking.

Historical and conceptual issues in psychology
Book by Marc Brysbaert; Kathy Rastle 2013