The curious cures of ancient Greek medicine

Ancient Greek thinkers tried to explain every natural phenomenon in human terms, without reference to magic or gods. That was a major intellectual revolution. Greek doctors’ contribution was to invent what has been called ‘rational’ medicine, embedding a principle of the highest importance, however hopeless its premise: which was that the health of the human body depended on the proper mixture inside it of four ‘elements’: earth, air, fire (i.e.