/oss/taxonomy/term/1564/all en /oss/article/medical-critical-thinking-history/book-natural-healers-really-hate <p>To the conspiracy-minded alternative health practitioner, everything was great until the Flexner Report was published.</p> Fri, 16 Aug 2024 03:19:23 +0000 Jonathan Jarry M.Sc. 10038 at /oss /oss/article/critical-thinking-health-and-nutrition/can-you-eat-beat-disease <p>Just about any publication that explores the role of diet in disease invokes Hippocrates’ famous dictum, “Let food be thy medicine, and let medicine be thy food.” Actually, there is no record of the famous ancient Greek physician ever having said this, although it is clear from the writings of the Hippocratic authors that Greeks did believe that disease and food were linked. “Hippocratic authors” is the correct terminology because historians concur that the works attributed to Hippocrates are compilations of his own writings and those of a number of his followers.</p> Wed, 19 Apr 2023 15:11:44 +0000 Joe Schwarcz PhD 9482 at /oss /oss/article/controversial-science-health-history/physicians-oath-humanity <p>Hippocrates is often regarded as the father of modern medicine in spite of his mistaken belief that illness and health were determined by the ups and downs of the four “humours,” namely black bile, yellow bile, phlegm and blood. If the humours were in harmony, the individual would be healthy, if they were out of kilter, illness would ensue. In light of what we now know about the workings of the body, this theory makes no sense, but it was revolutionary in the sense that it related sickness to what we could loosely call problems with the body’s chemistry.</p> Fri, 11 Apr 2014 12:33:50 +0000 Joe Schwarcz PhD & Alexandra Pires-Ménard, OSS Intern 2126 at /oss