Hippocratic One Health: Classical Reception in Medicine

Tashi Treadway (Johns Hopkins University)

This paper will discuss how the Hippocratic work Airs, Waters, and Places influenced a prominent U.S. scientist of the nineteenth century who was at the root of One Health, the idea that human, animal, and environmental health are interdependent[1]. This paper will also explore how productive this classical connection is to our understanding of antiquity and our appreciation of animal and environmental health.

Calvin Schwabe was a parasitologist trained in veterinary medicine[2]. He wrote Veterinary Medicine and Human Health which is full of “practical recommendations for the joint practice of human-non-human medicine” [3]. In Veterinary Medicine and Human Health, Schwabe traces the appearances of veterinary medicine and the idea of One Health in history. Schwabe brings up the Hippocratic work Airs, Waters, and Places to highlight examples of how a physician might use their analysis of the environment in their diagnosis. Schwabe states, “Hippocrates was one of the first epidemiologists, one of the first persons to apply the ecological approach to medical problems of populations.”[4] Schwabe initially called One Health “One Medicine.” The name changed to One Health in 2003 following the global outbreak of SARS in 2002[5].

Schwabe uses Airs, Waters, and Places both to explain and defend the idea of One Health by rooting it historically in Hippocratic medicine which has great authority over modern Western medicine. Additionally, the idea of One Health provides another eco-critical lens to look at depictions of health systems in antiquity and modernity.