Prognosis (Foretelling the Course of Disease)

For Hippocratic medicine, prognosis — knowing in advance how an illness would unfold — was the healer's central art. By reading the patient's face, breathing, sleep, excretions, and crises, a skilled physician could foretell recovery or death and guide care accordingly. The treatise 'Prognostic' (late 5th c. BCE) made this systematic, opening with the famous 'facies Hippocratica,' the death-mask look of a dying face. In an age with few effective cures, accurate prediction was what set the skilled physician apart and earned a community's confidence.