Healthcare in Greece

Abstract

What do we know about Greece, except that it is a country where "there is everything"? Unfortunately, financial crisis of the beginning of the 2000s painfully hit not only the Greek economy, but also affected many other areas, including healthcare. Up until recently, the Greek health care system occupied one of the last places among European countries, and it was the former Ancient Greece that gave humanity God Asclepius, better known as Aesculapius. According to the legend, Apollo killed Coronis who was pregnant with the future healer, removed from her womb the baby, whom they called Asclepius, and entrusted him to Chiron, the centaur, for training. It is believed that it was Chiron who taught the boy the art not only of healing people, but even resurrecting the dead. Temples of Asclepius were called Asclepions, they became the prototypes of future hospitals. The sick and wretched came to these temples so that the clergymen would give them healing. It was believed that if you leave the patient in Asklepion at night, Hygieia (later the patroness of “hygiene”) and Panacea (the term “panacea”, which means a cure for all diseases), daughters of Asclepius, will come there at night. And if at first the servants of God really tried to save the afflicted only by reading prayers, then later they began to apply herbal medicine, massage, water procedures, diet, and at a later stage even perform surgical interventions. One of the most famous followers of Asclepius was Hippocrates, whose name is associated with the emergence of medicine as a separate science [2]. It was he who first made the assumption that most diseases are of natural origin and are associated with the influence of external factors, and they are not a “God's punishment,” as it had been previously believed.