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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