Imhotep vs. Hippocrates = Healing vs. Healthcare
Imhotep was like the Chuck Berry to Hippocrates’s Elvis. Hippocrates was considered the father of modern medicine by the ancient Greeks, but to the ancient Africans in Kemet, also known as Egypt, Imhotep was considered the father of the art of healing.
And there’s a big difference between the two.
Imhotep’s approach to health was based on the concept of a cosmic, inter-connected wholism: a belief that everything in the Universe is connected—plants, animals, the elements, people, the ancestors, the planets, everything— and that everything is constantly impacting everything else. That meant that our well-being was inextricably linked to the well-being of the world we are connected to, and therefore addressing imbalances or disharmony in the world was a significant part of addressing imbalances and disharmony within ourselves.
Hippocrates’ approach to health was based on the concept of individual separatism, where medical science is disassociated from other sciences and from spirituality, and we are seen as disconnected to the world we live in and therefore unimpacted or minimally impacted by its energies and influences. As if one can just deal with the body alone, unrelated to the material and spiritual environments that is exists in.
The fact that modern medicine was built on Hippocrates’s philosophy of separatism instead of Imhotep’s philosophy of wholism is still impacting our health care system and our health to this day.
Some philosophers believe that the reverent reference to Asclepius in the Hippocratic oath is really a reference to Imhotep but that’s another video for another day. The point is, Hippocrates and his ilk utilized the medical research and teachings of ancient Kemetic philosopher-physicians like Imhotep, but it’s almost like they removed the scientific content from its philosophical context, reducing it from the wholistic art of healing to the siloed mechanical practice of medicine.
In Imhotep’s day, healers had to be versed in a variety of subjects and brought all this seemingly disparate information together to form a coherent, holistic understanding of life and how to restore balance and harmony within it. Imhotep studied math, politics, civics, astronomy, religion, plants, all types of things, and brought all of that knowledge to his medical practice and the diagnosis of diseases. In his role as an architect, he would have witnessed numerous trauma-related injuries among pyramid workers and it is believed that Imhotep is the true author of the medical papyri on trauma surgeries and injuries.
So, if we go by Imhotep’s philosophy, in addition to addressing people’s stomach issues, we would also need to see what’s going on with our food supply or our agricultural processes and embark on a re-balancing or healing process there as well. In addition to finding some sort of auditory vibrational therapy to soothe stress, maybe we also need to do some sort of culturally appropriate divination to see what’s going on in your spirit or with the astrological weather.
Imhotep’s art of healing was a way of acknowledging the impact of the entire ecosystem on members of the ecosystem, and that we are impacted by both the seen and the unseen, and that we should be inclusive of those things when diagnosing disease, imbalance, and disharmony.
But Hippocrates disassociated medical science from other sciences, thereby establishing a philosophy of separateness. Not only were doctors no longer required to consider or value all this other information that could help address illness and disease, but helps condition all of us to see ourselves and operate as though we’re somehow separate or unrelated to the world around us. As if our bodies and our health are not unimpacted by the moon, or by our spiritual well-being, or by the music we listen to, or how our culture approaches relationships, or capitalism.
I mean, some do, but it’s not the norm.
Who knows how much farther we could be if we were to have developed the healing arts along the philosophy of Imhotep rather than Hippocrates. What other ancient philosophies from African and indigenous cultures have been corrupted or removed from their context throughout history and how much the loss of its holistic, spiritual orientation continues to impact us to this day?!