CDCGeoSWG Series #1: Hippocrates
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Placed in time for CDC’s GIS week, this is the first in a series of caches that are in honor of notable public health people, events, or themes. This cache is a simple micro, accessible from several directions.
As the first cache in the series, it is appropriate that this one honors the famous physician Hippocrates. He is considered by many as the “father of western medicine” because of his lasting contributions to the field of medicine. Hippocrates is credited with separating medicine from religion, being the first person to believe that diseases are not caused by the gods, but through natural causes such as environmental factors, diet, and living habits. Hippocratic medicine depended on the healing power of nature. According to this approach, the human body has the capability to re-balance its four “humors” and heal itself. Health was defined as the balance of the four humors; disease as the imbalance of them. Hippocratic therapy attempted to enable this natural process of rebalancing. While not totally averse to the use of drugs, Hippocrates was reluctant to administer them. One of the strengths of Hippocratic medicine was its emphasis on prognosis. At Hippocrates' time, medicinal therapy was quite immature, and often the best thing that physicians could do was to evaluate an illness and predict its likely progression based upon data collected in detailed case histories.
The Hippocratic School promoted the clinical doctrines of observation and documentation. These doctrines require that physicians record their findings and their medicinal methods so that these records may be passed down and employed by other physicians. Hippocrates made careful, regular notes of many symptoms including complexion, pulse, fever, pains, movement, and excretions. He is reputed to have measured a patient's pulse when taking a case history to know if the patient lied. Hippocrates extended clinical observations into family history and environment. Hippocrates described many diseases and medical conditions. He is credited with the first description of clubbing of the fingers, an important diagnostic sign in chronic suppurative lung disease, lung cancer and cyanotic heart disease. For this reason, clubbed fingers are sometimes referred to as "Hippocratic fingers". Hippocrates categorized illnesses as acute, chronic, endemic and epidemic, and introduced concepts such as exacerbation, relapse, resolution, crisis, paroxysm, peak, and convalescence. Hippocrates contributed to the symptomatology, physical findings, surgical treatment and prognosis of thoracic empyema, which remain relevant to present-day students of pulmonary medicine and surgery. Hippocrates could even be claimed to be the first documented chest surgeon.
Hippocratic medicine was also notable for its strict professionalism, discipline, and rigorous practice. Hippocrates recommended that physicians always be well-kempt, honest, calm, understanding, and serious. Perhaps the best known contribution of Hippocrates (though there is historical dispute over whether it was actually written after his death) is the Hippocratic Oath:
By Apollo (the physician), by Asclepius (god of healing), by Hygeia (god of health), by Panacea (god of remedy), and all the gods and goddesses, together as witnesses, I hereby swear that I will carry out, inasmuch as I am able and true to my considered judgment, this oath and the ensuing duties:
1. To hold my teacher in this art on a par with my parents. To make my teacher a partner in my livelihood To look after my teacher and financially share with her/him when s/he is in need. To consider him/her as a brother/sister along with his/her family. To teach his/her family the art of medicine, if they want to learn it, without tuition or any other conditions of service. To impart all the lessons necessary to practice medicine to my own sons and daughters, the sons and daughters of my teacher and to my own students, who have taken this oath-but to no one else.
2. I will help the sick according to my skill and judgment, but never with an intent to do harm or injury to another.
3. I will never administer poison to anyone-even when asked to do so. Nor will I ever suggest a way that others (even the patient) could do so. Similarly, I will never induce an abortion. Instead, I will keep holy my life and art.
4. I will not engage in surgery–not even upon suffers from stone, but will withdraw in favor of others who do this work.
5. Whoever I visit, rich or poor, I will concern myself with the well being of the sick. I will commit no intentional misdeeds, nor any other harmful action such as engaging in sexual relations with my patients (regardless of their status).
6. Whatever I hear or see in the course of my professional duties (or even outside the course of treatment) regarding my patients is strictly confidential and I will not allow it to be spread about. But instead, will hold these as holy secrets.
Now if I carry out this oath and not break its injunctions, may I enjoy a good life and may my reputation be pure and honored for all generations. But if I fail and break this oath, then may the opposite befall me.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
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