Hippocrates, widely regarded today as the father of evidence-based medicine, was born in 460 BCE on the island of Kos, which is now part of Greece. He lived during the Golden Age of Greece a period in which artists and intellectuals, for the first time, began to seek truth through observation and reasoning. Contrary to the prevailing belief of his time, he rejected the notion that diseases stemmed from supernatural forces or the wrath of the gods. Instead, he embraced and taught the idea that every illness has an explanation grounded in cause-and-effect relationships.

He built his work upon systematic observation and devoted himself to transforming medicine into a discipline of both science and art. In this book, Hippocrates asserts that various diseases arise from various causes, thereby laying the foundation for the core principle of modern medical practice. Defining the patient as “an individual who reacts to illness in a manner unique to their constitution” (a notion that aligns with today’s maxim, “there are no diseases, only patients”), Hippocrates also argued that epilepsy once considered a sacred disease had a natural cause like all other illnesses, and that the disorder arose from a problem in the brain.

To illustrate how his insights resonate through time and invite readers to adopt a broader, more critical perspective, one example is particularly striking: Hippocrates observed flexible joints, chest deformities, and sudden deaths among certain members of the Scythian people findings that astonished him. We now recognize that these observations correspond to what was identified in the early 20th century by Danish physician Edvard Ehlers and French physician Henri-Alexandre Danlos as Ehlers–Danlos Syndrome.

This work sure to delight every member of the medical community holds exceptional value not only for guiding us on an unparalleled journey through the history of medicine, but also for illustrating the remarkable progress modern medicine has achieved.