Physician: Did you mean...?

Depiction of a physician preparing an elixir. Illustration from a folio of an Arabic translation of the 1st Century CE Greek medical text De Materia Medica. Iraq, 1224 CE. Ink, opaque watercolor, and...

Sushruta (c. 7th or 6th century BCE) was a physician in ancient India known today as the “Father of Indian Medicine” and “Father of Plastic Surgery” for inventing and developing surgical procedures. His work on the subject, the Sushruta...

Galen (129-216 CE) was a Greek physician, author, and philosopher, working in Rome, who influenced both medical theory and practice until the middle of the 17th century CE. Owning a large, personal library, he wrote hundreds of medical...

A famous story from Greece relates how a young woman named Agnodice wished to become a doctor in Athens but found this forbidden. In fact, a woman practicing medicine in Athens in the 4th century BCE faced the death...

The germ theory, which emerged in the late 19th century, demonstrated that microscopic germs caused most human infectious diseases. The germs involved included bacteria, viruses, fungi, protozoa, and prions. Louis Pasteur (1822-1895...

Oribasius (c. 320-400/403 CE) was the physician and political advisor of the Roman emperor Julian the Apostate (r. 361-363 CE). A native of Pergamon, a rich and powerful Greek city in Mysia, he studied medicine and oratory and belonged...

Medical practice in ancient Egypt was so advanced that many of their observations, policies, and commonplace procedures would not be surpassed in the west for centuries after the fall of Rome and their practices would inform...

Marcello Malpighi (1628-1694) was an Italian scientist and physician famous for discovering the capillaries of the human circulatory system in 1661 and, as the greatest anatomist of the Scientific Revolution, founding the science...

In ancient Mesopotamia, the gods informed every aspect of daily life, including the practice of medicine. Gula, the Sumerian goddess of healing, presided over the medical arts, guiding...

The human body's system of blood circulation was discovered by the English physician and anatomist William Harvey (1578-1657) in 1628. Harvey determined the relationship between the blood system of arteries...