The Greeks, from Hyppocrates, developed a humoral medicine system where treatment was to restore the balance of humours within the body. Ancient Medicine is a treatise on medicine, written roughly 400 B.C by Hyppocrates.

Medieval medicine was an evolving mixture of the scientific and the spiritual. In the early middle ages, following the fall off the Roman Empire, standard medical knowledge was based chiefly upon surviving Greek and Roman texts, preserved in monasteries and elsewhere.

Islamic Medicine

The Islamic World rose to primacy in medical science with such thinkers as Ibn Sina (Avicenna), Ibn Nafis and Rhazes. The first generation of Persian superb physicians were trained at the Academy of Gundishapur, where the teaching hospital was the first invented.

The Comprehensive Book of Medicine (Large Comprehensive, Hawi or “al-Hawi” or “The Continence”) was written by the Iranian chemist Rhazes (known also as Razi), the “Large Comprehensive” was the most sought after of all his compositions.

The “Kitab fi al-jadari wa-al-hasbah” by Rhazes, with its introduction on measles and smallpox was also very influential in Europe.

The Mutazilite philosopher and doctor Ibn Sina was another influential figure. His The Canon of Medicine, sometimes considered the most famous book in the history of medicine, remained a standard text in Europe up until its Age of Enlightenment and the renewal of the Islamic tradition of scientific medicine.

Ibn Nafis described human blood circulation. This discovery would be rediscovered or perhaps merely demonstrated, by William Harvey in 1628, who generally receives the credit in Western history.

Modern Medicine

Medicine was revolutionized in the 18th century and beyond by advances in chemistry and laboratory techniques and equipment, old ideas of infectious disease epidemiology were replaced with bacteriology.

Ignaz Semmelweis in 1847 dramatically reduced the death rate of new mothers from childbed fever by the simple experiment of requiring physicians to wash their hands before attending to women in childbirth.

His discovery predated the germ theory of disease. However, his discoveries were not appreciated by his contemporaries and came into use only with discoveries of British surgeon Joseph Lister, who in 1865 proved the principles of antiseptic.