Few scholars of ancient medicine have considered that Hippocratic practice may be based in part upon the experience and tradition, handed-down from generation to generation, starting before the end of the Bronze Age in 1100 BC. This paper examines the evidence for medical practitioners in the Aegean in the second millennium BC, and of medical contacts between the Aegean and contemporary bronze age societies of Egypt and the Near East at this time, and suggests that some of these contacts may have been the start of Near Eastern influence on Greek medicine.