• Helen Askitopoulou, Georgios Stefanakis, Elisabeth E Astyrakaki, Alexandra Papaioannou, and Panagiotis Agouridakis.
• Departments of aAnaesthesiology bEmergency Medicine cFaculty of Medicine, University of Crete dUniversity Hospital of Heraklion, Crete, Greece.
• Eur J Emerg Med. 2016 Dec 1; 23 (6): 399-405.

AbstractThe collected works οf Hippocrates include a wealth of references to emergencies and acute conditions; if the physician could treat these, he would be considered superior to his colleagues. Works most relevant to current Emergency Medicine are presented. They indicate Hippocrates' remarkable insight and attention to the value of close observation, meticulous clinical examination, and prognosis. Hippocrates and his followers disdained mystery and were not satisfied until they had discovered a rational cause to diseases. They assigned great significance to distressing signs and symptoms - the famous Hippocratic face, the breathing pattern, pain, seizures, opisthotonus - pointing to a fatal outcome, which they reported to their patient. The principles of treatment of emergencies, such as angina, haemorrhage, empyema, ileus, shoulder dislocations and head injuries, are astonishingly similar to the ones used nowadays.

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