Pythagoras, his disciples and medicine ----------------------------------------
Made famous by the theorem that bears his name, Pythagoras founded a philosophical school grounded in knowledge. It is thus only natural that this celebrated Greek scholar turned his attention not only to mathematics but also to medicine. He was likely the first to separate it from magic, and can thus be regarded as one of the founders of the Western approach to medicine, a discipline grounded in rationality. He drew a connection between the four elements — earth, fire, water and air — present both in nature and in the human body.
One of his disciples, Alcmaeon of Croton, in fact devoted himself to medicine. He practiced dissection and thereby considerably broadened anatomical knowledge. He devised a theory of the embryo, claiming that the child's sex is determined by whichever of the two parents produced the more abundant seed at conception.
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