Hippocrates

Hippocrates of Kos, who lived from about 460 to about 370 BC, was a Greek physician and philosopher of the classical period, traditionally called the Father of Medicine. He is credited with establishing medicine as a discipline distinct from philosophy and theurgy, and with ideas such as clinical observation, prognosis and the systematic categorization of disease. Tradition ties his name to the Hippocratic Oath and the Hippocratic Corpus, though very little is known for certain about what he personally wrote or did, because his achievements are often conflated with those of his school and the authors of the corpus. For the history of technology he matters as the person associated with the Hippocratic bench, a device that used tension to aid in setting bones and a rudimentary ancestor of modern orthopedic traction equipment, and for his advice that a surgeon keep an organized set of instruments.