[History of pneumology in antiquity (part 2)]

Nowadays, Hippocrate, "The Father of Medicine", still influences our medicine. He was famous because of the great medical corpus texts preserved in his name. Only recently, our universities have updated the famous Hippocratic Oath to avoid contradictions with our modern ethics. Hippocrate was a great clinician but a poor anatomist. Hippocratical humourism remained accurate until the age of the enlightenment (18th century). Furthermore, it is difficult to distinguish medicine from philosophy in Greek antiquity. So we have to contextualize Greek ancient medicine in this philosophical field. In the 3rd century before Christus (BC), the centre of gravity in medicine shifted to Alexandria. Indeed, a famous academic library was created in 288 BC. At the same time, dissection of human cadavers was authorized until the first century BC. This enabled the evolution of the knowledge in anatomy and physiology. Rome was still polytheistic population until the end of ancient times. Rome integrated Greek gods in his pantheon. Asclepios became Aesculapius. Rome despises physicians in the first ancient age of Rome. The family's father provided medical cares. A lot of Greek physicians settled then in Rome. Again, roman medicine grew in parallel with philosophical trends. These trends were called "sects" but in fact, they were rather medical schools. In this review, we will especially talk about three physicians of this period: Aurelius Cornelius Celsus, Arétée of Cappadocia and Galenus of Pergamon. Thereafter, medical knowledge did not really change significantly until Renaissance period.