Discuss: Medical Ethics in Ancient World. Health, Medicine, Nursing

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Discuss: Medical Ethics in Ancient World.
1 From a clinical perspective, how did the humoral theory of disease provide an empirical basis for the diagnosis and treatment of illness?
Humoral theory provided the basis of the human body and religious beliefs as a predominant influence on medical practices in ancient Greece. It involved medical practices like bloodletting which was practiced to make sick people bleed for medical reasons. In ancient Greece, bloodletting was practiced to remove pathological humor from a patient's body to restore the balance of their humor and alleviate the illness affecting the patient (Sebers 1). Humoral theory indicated that the human body consists of four humors which represent the cardinal fluids in the body. The cardinal fluids are yellow bile, black bile, phlegm, and blood. Each humor was believed to be associated with different seasons and organs. Yellow bile is associated with liver and summer, black bile with spleen and autumn, phlegm with brain and winter, and blood associated with heart and spring. These fluids provide a natural balance unique to each person that maintains the health of humans. Illness may occur when the natural balance is disturbed. The theory also asserted that every human possesses two primary opposite qualities, that’s is hot, cold, moist, and dry (Sebers 2).
2 The Hippocratic author of the treatise Epidemics stated that “Nature is the physician of diseases.” What did this imply to the ancient clinician?
Humoral theory provided the foundation of thought that illness is a result of natural causes as opposed to the work of the supernatural. This theory marked the beginning of the use of empirical data. This made the Hippocratic author reject theories of religious causes that illness is a punishment from angry gods. Before Hippocrates, religious practices were a major source of healing of all illness. Hippocrates physicians adopted the humoral theory which guided their practice of medicine for a very long time. Their medical practices shifted from blames of religious causes and gods to natural causes. They moved away from irrational beliefs and ended up adopting empirical data for theory and practice, and strongly opposed any idea of religious causes of diseases. Hippocrates physicians believed in the hypothesis that provided reasoning for what causes a particular illness and viewed the disease as a specific entity with an ontological status independent of the whole patient (Carrick 35).
3 Compare and contrast the physiological and ontological concepts of disease and health. To which models do the atomistic and the humoral theory belong?
The physiological concepts characteristically construe disease as a consequence of imbalanced functions occurring within a person and emphasize the uniqueness of each person’s afflictions. It construes pathological disease processes as occurring inside the person instead of evaluating dysfunction to the outside or invading disease entities. In contrast, ontological concepts of disease characteristically do not construe disease as a consequence of imbalanced functions occurring within the body. It emphasizes the specific reality and specialty of the dise...