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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Roman Collector, post: 4410406, member: 75937&quot;]Hippocrates believed diseases came from a variety of natural sources, such as dietary indiscretion, excessive drink, &quot;bad air,&quot; cold temperatures, and such. He wrote a treatise about epilepsy arguing that it was not due to supernatural forces. While many ancient people were superstitious, some were not.</p><p><br /></p><p>It&#039;s informative to read his treatise, <a href="http://classics.mit.edu/Hippocrates/epidemics.1.i.html" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://classics.mit.edu/Hippocrates/epidemics.1.i.html" rel="nofollow"><i>Of the Epidemics</i></a>, from ca 400 BC. He describes weather conditions and astronomical phenomena though he doesn&#039;t explicitly blame them. He mostly describes the signs and symptoms of the patients affected.</p><p><br /></p><p>He notes:</p><p><br /></p><blockquote><p>With regard to diseases, the circumstances from which we form a judgment of them are,- by attending to the general nature of all, and the peculiar nature of each individual,- to the disease, the patient, and the applications,- to the person who applies them, as that makes a difference for better or for worse,- to the whole constitution of the season, and particularly to the state of the heavens, and the nature of each country;- to the patient&#039;s habits, regimen, and pursuits;- to his conversation, manners, taciturnity, thoughts, sleep, or absence of sleep, and sometimes his dreams, what and when they occur;- to his picking and scratching;- to his tears;- to the alvine discharges, urine, sputa, and vomitings; and to the changes of diseases from the one into the other;- to the deposits, whether of a deadly or critical character;- to the sweat, coldness, rigor, cough, sneezing, hiccup, respiration, eructation, flatulence, whether passed silently or with a noise;- to hemorrhages and hemorrhoids;- from these, and their consequences, we must form our judgment.</p></blockquote><p>[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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