Thursday, November 19, 2015

Food as Medicine: Part 2 - Ancient Greece

Food as Medicine:
Part 2 - Ancient Greece


 Ancient Greece

As the homeland of Hippocrates, the first physician that considered medicine to be a science rather chalking illness up to divine punishment, it is only natural that ancient Greece would have a few foods they also prescribed as medicine.

Hippocratic medicine was all about balancing the four humours of the body (black bile, yellow bile, phlegm and blood) through the four elements of the cosmos (air, earth, water and fire) and the quality of each element (cold, dry, damp and warm). This thought process would continue on through the middle ages. Herbs, medical practices and food all served as tools to balance the humours. Hippocrates practised close observation and sound judgement and he stated that healing had to be found through experience and through the properties of various vegetable foods, and discovered that what was suitable in health was unsuitable in sickness and the accumulation of these discoveries was the origin of the art of medicine.

Through this trial and error, a number of food concoctions became popular. The most popular potions were water and honey, an infusion of barley or milk. These were meant to be eating in place of food when sick due to their ability in balancing one humour or another and overeating was thought to just make the imbalance worse.

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