Abstract

This paper summarizes historical and philosophical aspects, from Ancient Greece to the Middle Ages, concerning the split between physicians and surgeons that began to take place in Alexandria. When exploring the changes in classical medical thought and its influence on philosophy, we conclude that this historical moment was marked by a dual distinction between an essential being and a body subjected to becoming. From a unified mind in Hippocrates, in which medicine is based in knowledge of the relations, subjected to laws, of the organism exposed to natural forces phi upsilon sigma iota sigma (physis among the Jonics), a rift amongst body and soul is conceived, specifically in Platonic thought, from which the surgical intervention of the body is considered improper of the medical apt.