MEDICINE  IN  MEDIEVAL

 

During the Middle Ages the influence of Christian theology affected medicine in several ways. The Christian emphasis on charity and concern for the sick and injured led to the establishment of hospitals often related to and maintained by monastic orders. In the later Middle Ages, spacious, fine hospitals were built by the Knights of St. John, including Saint Bartholomew's in London and one at Rhodes.

 

               

                 FDC of Knights of St.John                                                  St. Benedectius 480 – 547

 

 

The concern of Christian theology, on the other hand, was to cure the soul rather than the body; disease usually was considered supernatural in origin and cured by religious means. As a result, scientific investigation was inhibited during this time. Brothers of various monasteries copied and preserved those scientific manuscripts and documents which were thought to be consistent with prevailing religious thought, notably the works of Galen and Aristotle.

 

 

 

 

St. Lukas Stamp from Eastern Germany

 

Salerno

The first European medical school was founded at Salerno, near Naples, in the 8^th century. The area was still part of the Byzantine Empire, so that many Greek texts were available. The faculty derived its learning from several sources, and exceptional freedom was suggested by the probable presence of women professors; the best known, Trotula, was a gynecologist who published a handbook of midwifery. The anatomy taught there was based on that of the pig, and the physiology and pathology followed that of Galen, but a spirit of investigation suffused the institution. By the 11^th century it had become a center of medical knowledge. The course of study took five years to complete, after which students were required to pass an examination before being allowed to practice. Although the school declined after the 12^th century, its spirit was transmitted to the greatest medical schools of the Renaissance, Bologna and Padua.

Hotel Dieu; Monastery Hospital was founded in 1443

 

Montpellier

A school was founded at Montpellier shortly after the one at Salerno. Intellectually descended from Islamic medicine, by the 13^th century it was producing such physicians as Guy de Chauliac (c.1300-1370), one of the greatest of the medieval surgeons. That same century saw the founding of the schools at Bologna and Padua. At Bologna, the physician Taddeo Alderotti (c.1223-1303) was a prime mover in establishing postmortem dissections and an early developer of the Consilia, or medical case book, in which advice was given by the professor to younger or less sophisticated physicians. Thus was born the clinical case history.

 

Medieval medicine was a mixture of magic, religion, and empirical investigation. This is exemplified by the varied reactions to the onset of the Black Death, or bubonic plague, which first appeared in Europe in 1348. The plague was ascribed to miasmas, vapors, poisoning of wells by Jews, divine punishment for sins, and as many other reasons as fertile imaginations could devise. On the other hand, a good medical description of the disease was provided by de Chauliac, and the plague's visitation resulted in the appointment of three guardians of public health by the Venetian Republic--the first such public health officers.