Fifth/Fourth Century BCE - Greece 'About 60 medical writings, known collectively as the Hippocratic corpus' Before the time of Hippocrates there had been little science in medicine. Disease was believed to be the punishment of the gods. Divine intervention came not from the natural, but from the supernatural. 'Treatment', therefore, came also from the supernatural, through magic, witchcraft, superstition…

Alchemy symbols, originally devised as part of the protoscience of alchemy, were used to denote some elements and some compounds until the 18th century.