HIST 249 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Natural Philosophy, Prognostics, Readwrite
Medieval Medicine 1: Medicine's
"Academic Truth"
• Reading:
o Online e-book chapter: Michael McVaugh - Medicine in the
Latin Middle Ages
o McVaugh, 65 :
▪ The medicine of the High Middle Ages could be thought
of as a kind of fulfilment of the medicine of antiquity (the
ancient past, esp. the period before the Middle Ages)
▪ A mix of traditions and approaches among which the
rationalist enjoyed particular prestige
▪ No doubt academic physicians felt themselves to be
solidly in that tradition as they recovered and
expounded the works of Galen
o Beginnings of university medicine
o Growth of surgery
o Growth in the secularization of medicine
• The Birth of Academic Medicine
o Universities
o Common medical doctor & what constitutes medical
knowledge
o What frames it? Education & the knowledge that this gave
you
o Revolution in Western Europe
o How medicine goes academic
• Medicine at Salerno in the 12th Century
o Hot spot for the emergence of academic style of teaching
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2
medicine
o Western Europe was a back water - economically backwards
• All of this changes rapidly in the long 12th century:
o Political stability in the West through formations of kingdoms
o Economic take off (cities, commerce) --> more money
o An aggressive, expansionist Europe
▪ Self conscious of itself
▪ Language remains in Latin
o A united, Christian society
▪ Vision promoted by the church
▪ Religious unity guaranteed by the church was its core
identity
▪ Christian society
▪ Pope of the West - universal monarch
▪ Growth of bureaucracy - demands to fill these positions
/ jobs
o A market for learning
▪ Jobs in church & state - jobs for people who could
read/write in Latin
▪ Logic, law, managerial skills
• South central Italy
• Salerno
o Health resort
o A lot of doctors there
o Hot thermal springs
o By the second decade of the 12th century - these doctors are
opening schools teaching students in a formal way using
texts (just like they did in Alexandria)
o These texts are coming from the Constantine the African
▪ Devoted several decades of his life from Arabic -->
Latin (which was previously translated from Greek -->
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3
Arabic
▪ Initial data base for this learning enterprise
• The Articella
o 'Galen for dummies'
o For teaching purposes
o Anthology of texts arranged in a fixed order (like a curriculum)
for teaching
o 'course pack' - Articella (little art of medicine)
o Texts:
▪ Joannitius
▪ Hippocrates, Aphorisms
▪ Hippocrates, Prognostics
▪ Theophilus, On Urines
▪ Philaretus, On Pulses
▪ Galen, Art of Medicine
o Start with translations, commentaries
• Salerno's Style
o Formal teaching in boutique schools
o Kind of like how we teach here or in Alexandria
o Set texts
▪ Constantine's translations
▪ Articella
o Commentaries
▪ Refer to medicine as 'physica' - natural science
▪ Teaching a medical science
o Questions
▪ Uses the text as a spring board to examine certain
things
▪ Causality in the natural world
▪ Medicine & natural world
▪ Influenced by Aristotle's logic & natural philosophy
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