Hippocrates

Hippocrates, "the Father of Medicine," was born about 460 B.C. A descendant of AEsculapius, he belonged to the Asclepiadae, and his father was a physician. Little is known of his life, which was spent partly in travel, partly in practice at Athens, where he won a high reputation. He died at Larissa, at the age of 85, according to some, others adding five-and-twenty years to this figure. No fewer than eighty-seven treatises are ascribed to him, but of these not more than twelve or thirteen are accepted as genuine. These latter deal with a variety of topics - e.y. prognostics, epidemics, regimen, public health and climate, fractures, injuries to the joints and head, etc. The most widely known of his works is The Aphorisms, but it is of doubtful authenticity and inferior to much of his work. He appears to have had an inkling of the method of diagnosis by auscultation, as is testified by the phrase "Hippocratic succussion "in use for many centuries. The facies Hippocratica is the expression worn by the features of a person immediately before death.