Historians agree that Hippocrates was born around the year 460 BC on the Greek island of Kos (Cos), and became a famous physician and teacher of medicine. Other biographical information, however, is likely to be untrue . Soranus of Ephesus, a 2nd-century Greek gynecologist, was Hippocrates’ first biographer and is the source of most information on Hippocrates’ person. Information about Hippocrates can also be found in the writings of Aristotle, which date from the 4th century BC, in the Suda of the 10th century AD, and in the works of John Tzetzes, which date from the 12th century AD.
Soranus wrote that Hippocrates’ father was Heraclides, a physician; his mother was Praxitela, daughter of Tizane. The two sons of Hippocrates, Thessalus and Draco, and his son-in-law, Polybus, were his students. According to Galen, a later physician, Polybus was Hippocrates’ true successor, while Thessalus and Draco each had a son named Hippocrates. Soranus said that Hippocrates learned medicine from his father and grandfather, and studied other subjects with Democritus and Gorgias.
Hippocrates was probably trained at the asklepieion of Kos, and took lessons from the Thracian physician Herodicus of Selymbria. The only contemporaneous mention of Hippocrates is in Plato’s dialogue Protagoras, where Plato describes Hippocrates as “Hippocrates of Kos, the Asclepiad”. Hippocrates taught and practiced medicine throughout his life, traveling at least as far as Thessaly, Thrace, and the Sea of Marmara. He probably died in Larissa at the age of 83 or 90, though some accounts say he lived to be well over 100; several different accounts of his death exist.
Hippocratic theory Hippocrates is credited with being the first physician to reject superstitions, legends and beliefs that credited supernatural or divine forces with causing illness. Hippocrates was credited by the disciples of Pythagoras of allying philosophy and medicine. He separated the discipline of medicine from religion, believing and arguing that disease was not a punishment inflicted by the gods but rather the product of environmental factors, diet, and living habits.