The Egyptians didn’t move around like people in prehistory, they had a permanent settlement so they didn’t need to all of their time hunting for animals because they had their own live stock which meant they could focus their time on other things like treatments and preventitives for illnesses.
Although their religion hindered them from finding out more about the human body, it also helped them. They still learnt about anatomy because they had to embalm the dead to prepare their bodies for the afterlife; the vital organs were taken out and placed in five canobic jars, and the body was preserved with salts and spices to dry it out before it was wrapped in bandages, because the Egyptians believed that people would need their bodies in the afterife so dissection of the other parts of the body were not allowed.
The Greeks were slightly more developd than the Egyptians. The Greeks did have an individual to help with the progression of medicine called Hippocrates who introduced the theory of the four humours, he believed that the four natural elements were linked to the four seasons and how a person became ill. Hippocrates also believed that the for humours needed to remain balanced in order for someone to stay healthy. Hippocrates was important tt o the development of medicine in Greece; he had his own collection of books that were still being used for hundreds of years after his death, he developed his own theories for the causes of disease, he encouraged doctors to use natural treatments for illness instead of going to see Gods, he had an oath that is still being used today and he demonstarted how useful it was to observe and reord patients symptoms and treatments.
The Greeks had didn’t only use the theories of Hippocrates they had specialist doctors to help people with illnesses, but when doctors could not cure patients with their medicine and other remedies, the doctor would suggest that the person should look towards the Gods or to visit and Asclepion. Asclepions were a group of temples that were built in quiet and secluded areas to so people could relax bath, exerise and change their diet, before they would go and spend the night in an Abaton where they sleep and dream that they were being visited by the God Asclepius, and when they woke they would be cured from whatever it was that was wrong with them.
The Romans were a lot more developed than the Greeks in their progression in medicine they moved away from the ideas that different Gods contolled peoples lives and that they could cause and treat illness. The Romans came up with their own public health system that provided the towns in Rome with water for fountains, public baths and latrines, and had a sewer system to take away any waste products to a sewer away from the towns. They came up with this idea of the public health system without an individual but they did have one.
The individual that the Romans had was from Greece and was called Galen. Galen followed the ideas of Hippocrates and took them one step further he believed in using a theory of the opposites to balance the four humours he also tried to prove his ideas to other doctors but dissection wasn’t allowed in Rome so Galen had to try and show off his ideas using animals.
In conclusion I think that although individuals like Hippocrates and Galen did help quite a lot with the development of medicine there were other factors that each ancient civilisation had that also contributed to the progression in medicine like religion. Religion played a big part in each ancient civilisation but I think that individuals and other factors contributed equally together side by side in the progression of medicine.
