• Olivier Lafont.
• Rev Hist Pharm (Paris). 2016 Dec 1; 64 (392): 503-18.

AbstractMost pre-Socratic Greek philosophers originated from Ionia, in Minor Asia, where Achaeans had been installed since the 11th century B. C. During the Age of Pericles, Empedocles of Agrigento, in Sicily, Leucippus and Democritus from Abdera, Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, active in Athens, and Socrates in Athens also took over philosophy and science in Continental Greece. Plato, Socrates’ disciple and founder of Academia, and his own disciple Aristotle, founder of the Lyceum, and his pupils, such as Theophrastus of Eresos, followed them. In the area of medicine and pharmacy, Hippocrates of Cos and his disciples and followers redacted between 450 and 300 B. C., what is known as Hippocratic corpus. Then came Galen from Pergamum who completed the theory of Humours, during the second century. Nestorian Christians, considered as heretical in the Byzantine Empire, were accepted in Sassanid Persia and carried Greek culture with them. After Arabic conquest and Baghdad City creation, in 762, they translated Hippocratic corpus in Arabic language so that Hippocratico-Galenic theory could pass in Arabic-Muslim world. It was then developed by Al-Kindi in Baghdad, Ibn Al-Jazzar in Kairouan, Razes or Avicenna, both Persians. The 11th and the 12th centuries were characterised by Latin translations, by Constantine the African in Monte-Cassino, Gerard of Cremona or Mark of Toledo. The School of Salerno created then the conditions for the fusion of Greek, Arabic and Jewish medicines. The creation of modern science from Greek philosophy was a consequence of a permanent dialogue between Orient and Occident.

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