In the process of preparing a talk on ways to use technology to study the relationship between health and place, I came across On Airs, Waters, and Places by Hippocrates. This 400 BC essay, besides being a reminder that most of today’s ‘new’ ideas have been around for a while, puts the study of health within a broader environmental context.
Whoever wishes to investigate medicine properly, should proceed thus: in the first place to consider the seasons of the year, and what effects each of them produces for they are not at all alike, but differ much from themselves in regard to their changes. Then the winds, the hot and the cold, especially such as are common to all countries, and then such as are peculiar to each locality. We must also consider the qualities of the waters, for as they differ from one another in taste and weight, so also do they differ much in their qualities. In the same manner, when one comes into a city to which he is a stranger, he ought to consider its situation, how it lies as to the winds and the rising of the sun; for its influence is not the same whether it lies to the north or the south, to the rising or to the setting sun…
I copied the full essay into Wordle.
