Hippocrates, the father of medicine (c. 460 BC to c. 370 BC)
Born on the island of Kos, he is recognised as the father of medicine for making it a practice grounded in observation and reason. He separated disease from divine punishment: causes were natural, so the physician had to examine the person, their habits, the climate and the place they lived in. His school left the Hippocratic Corpus, some sixty treatises where diagnosis, prognosis and the regimen of life are written down for the first time, and the oath that still inspires the commitment to do no harm.
Let food be thy medicine.
(Fiat cibus tuus medicina tua.)
Health depends on the regimen of life, and food is its first piece. The body has its own capacity to heal (the vis medicatrix naturae of the Hippocratic texts) and what we eat gives it or takes from it the conditions to do so. Today's science confirms the direction: a diet of minimally processed foods lowers the risk of chronic disease.
Walking is the best medicine.
(Walking is man's best medicine.)
Moving every day is treatment, not only prevention, and the simplest way to do it is within everyone's reach. In the text, food is not enough without exercise.
Art is long, life is short.
(Ars longa, vita brevis. Ὁ βίος βραχύς, ἡ δὲ τέχνη μακρή.)
The aphorism goes on: the occasion is fleeting, experience deceptive, judgement difficult, and it is not enough for the physician to do his part; the patient and those around him must do theirs. That is the idea of the platform: the appointment and the person's daily life, together.
First, do no harm.
(Primum non nocere.)
Before treating, weigh what could do harm. It holds for a medicine, for a manipulation and for the reading of a number: that is why the platform shows the data and leaves the interpretation to the appointment.
Eating alone will not keep a person well; they must also take exercise. Food and exercise, of opposite qualities, work together to produce health.
Both sleep and wakefulness, when immoderate, are bad.
People ought to know that from the brain, and from the brain only, arise our pleasures, joys, laughter and jests, as well as our sorrows, pains, griefs and tears.
The same idea, 2,300 years apart.
Hippocrates wrote that "nature is the physician of diseases" (Epidemics, VI, 5, 1): the body carries within it what makes it heal, and the physician helps nature rather than replacing it. In 1874, Andrew Taylor Still founded osteopathy on the same principle: the body is a unit, structure and function depend on each other, and the body regulates and repairs itself when nothing stands in its way.
That is where the five pillars come from. Osteopathy seeks to remove what keeps the body from regulating itself. The five pillars are what, every day, gives it the conditions to do so.
Nature is the physician of diseases.
(Νούσων φύσιες ἰητροί.)
Hippocrates, Epidemics, VI, 5, 1Andrew Taylor Still · Kirksville, 1874The body is a unit; structure and function are reciprocally interrelated; the body has self-regulating and self-healing mechanisms.
The principles of osteopathy, as the osteopathic schools state themThat is where the five pillars come from.
What people ask about Hippocrates.
Is "let food be thy medicine" really Hippocrates?
Not in these words: the line is not in the texts that reached us, and the Latin form in which it circulates is modern. The closest is the treatise Regimen, which says that eating is not enough without exercise and that the two, together, make health.
What did Hippocrates write about sleep and exercise?
In the Aphorisms (II, 3), that both sleep and wakefulness, when immoderate, are bad. In Regimen (I, 2), that food and exercise, of opposite qualities, work together to produce health. These are the lines with book and chapter that we use in the pillars.
What links Hippocrates to Andrew Taylor Still?
The idea that nature heals: "nature is the physician of diseases" (Epidemics, VI, 5, 1) and, in 1874, Still's principles of osteopathy: the body is a unit, structure and function are reciprocally interrelated, and the body has self-regulating and self-healing mechanisms. Osteopathy seeks to remove what keeps the body from regulating itself; the five pillars are what, every day, gives it the conditions to do so.
Caring for health means thinking long term.
In the appointment, we look at your health, movement and context to define an approach suited to your needs.