In Homer, Asclepius seems to be a human, albeit one whose father was a Centaur. Later on in Greek history, though, Asclepius will be seen as a god of medicine. This is already one way that medicine is like philosophy: the seeds of a tradition are already planted in the Homeric poems. Another striking parallel is that Greek medicine is associated with the same region of the Greek world as gave birth to philosophy: the far eastern Mediterranean.
