 Insofar as biomedicine formed in the West, it is helpful to see it in contrast to the medical and philosophical traditions that preceded it. The most influential Western tradition prior to biomedicine is the Hippocratic tradition—the views attributed to Hippocrates and over two millennia of re-interpretations, riffs, amendments, and other alterations. At the core of Hippocratic medicine were two views. First, it made a commitment to methodological naturalism—a refusal to attribute disease processes to the work of gods and other supernatural beings (Conrad, Neve, Nutton, Porter, &amp; Wear 1995). Though, it is worth noting that for much of that history, elements of astrology, talismans, and some forms of magic were understood as essentially natural phenomena (e.g., the sun obviously affects health via sunburns and such, so it is not absurd to have inferred that planets could have their own subtle effects on bodies too). Second, it understood health as a matter of balance—and disease as a matter of imbalance—of the humors. Humoral theory was interpreted in many different ways, but centered on the idea that heath and disease are attributable to the interactions of anatomical humors (blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile), which were in turn directly tied to a much larger cosmology of the elements (e.g., blood is linked to air, the springtime, a combination of heat and moisture, the heart, and the astrological influence of the planet Jupiter) (see additional internet resources below) (Conrad et al., 1995).