In my latest novel, Aphrodite’s Tears, my heroine takes a job working on a small Greek island off whose coast a fascinating old shipwreck has been discovered. As an archaeologist, Oriel is used to being immersed in the past, but she is astonished to find the past so present on the island of Helios. In some ways, stepping onto Helios is like stepping back in time, to the world of the Ancient Greeks. The islanders even make a sacrifice each year of a wild boar and walk across hot coals in order to appease the volcano on Helios, named for the mythical beast Typhoeus.

The leader of Helios, Damian, sees it as his job to preserve the heritage of the island. He tells Oriel:

‘You can’t behave on Helios as you would in your own country … The community on Helios is conservative … most of the islanders have never left its sanctuary. The people here are simple folk who lead uncomplicated lives, and for the most part are happy. This is the main reason why Helios has never welcomed tourism. Like my ancestors, I don’t want to corrupt the island.’

‘Corrupt?’ Oriel queries.

‘Let’s just say,’ Damian replies, ‘it’s a conservation island, an island of notable environmental and historical importance that I’m protecting against undesirable change, like any other conservation area in the world.’

Undesirable change. How does one determine which changes are undesirable? With such a matter being highly subjective, the danger is that all change is rejected, and thus necessary changes are avoided.

For one Ancient Greek, Damian’s was the kind of attitude that needed to be challenged. Hippocrates was born on the Greek island of Kos in around 460 BC. As was traditional, he learned his profession from his father and grandfather, who were physicians, and he devoted his life to medicine.

At that time, people believed that illness was bestowed by the gods. Whatever ailed you was a result of your having annoyed a deity, and the only way to protect yourself from disease was through rituals and offerings to the gods and goddesses of Mount Olympus. Hippocrates had a different idea, however. All of his studies led him to believe that sickness was a natural, not mystical, occurrence. He wrote:

It is thus with regard to the disease called Sacred: it appears to me to be nowise more divine nor more sacred than other diseases, but has a natural cause from the originates like other affections. Men regard its nature and cause as divine from ignorance and wonder….

So while one could call on the gods for guidance and support (as in what came to be known as his Hippocratic Oath for physicians), Hippocrates taught that the gods were not responsible for the illness in the first place; they were not inflicting disease on mortals as punishment.

Hippocrates taught at the medical school on Kos, and he travelled widely through Greece and Asia Minor sharing his philosophy – on the causation of disease, and on many other aspects of medicine included in his Corpus.

Can you imagine being an Ancient Greek who has learned of Hippocrates’ take on sickness? Can you imagine trying to realign your thinking – to cast out the time-old belief that the vengeful gods cause illness and that protection can be yours through prayer and rituals; to instead consider such simple things as what you eat and how well you sleep as factors in maintaining good health?

That, certainly, is a radical change. Undesirable to many, no doubt; after all, it could be deemed sacrilegious.

Yet more than two thousand years later, Hippocrates is widely known as ‘the Father of Medicine’. It was thanks to his willingness to push for change that desirable change did indeed occur, because sufficient people saw the wisdom in his perspective.

Back on Helios, Oriel tells Damian: ‘My concern is that you’re not giving your people a choice. Your attitude is almost feudal.’

Damian replies: ‘Feudalism is a negative label. Paternalism would be a better word to describe what we have on Helios. Stay a while, and you will understand. But you’re right, it is another world, in so many ways.’

Is Damian right to protect this island, this other world, from change? All change? Or are some changes an essential – and natural – part of life?

I am reminded of the wisdom of the great Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu:

Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.