Sick Over the Centuries

Me, not in Greece, not sick, eating wild blueberries. Take it or leave it.

Malaria.  HIV.  West Nile.  In the last ten years Greece has had outbreaks of all of these diseases.  But cooler yet, at least to a Microbiology major like me, is that in ancient Greece, there were diseases known and treated, some of which have been connected to maladies that continue on into our time.

Hippocrates and his fellow researchers were some of the first to observe, document, and attempt to treat diseases.  One of the texts written at Hippocrates' pseudo medical school even contained a description of asthma, one of my future research focuses.  We even still use some of their "home remedies," such as honey for acne and desensitization for allergy treatments.  Though our technological advances have allowed us to make discoveries at a larger scale in a shorter amount of time, perhaps it was upon their foundation of medical learning that we built.