History of Science 2220 Chapter 1: Vesalius Reading notes
2 May 2018
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Vesalius - Dedication to Charles V
Medicine began to be wasted by having its primary instrument, the application of the hand's work in
healing be so neglected that regular people and those completely untrained in the disciplines that serve
the medical art.
3 Medical Sects:
1. The logical
2. Empiric
3. Methodist
- All of which were directed toward the preservation of health and the destruction of disease.
3 Means of Aid (triple system of healing):
1. A system of diet - establishing a dietary regimen
2. Medication - knowing and compounding medications
3. Surgery
- medicine is the addition of things that are lacking and the removal of what is superfluous
Rarely does any disease occur that does not from the start require the threefold application of remedies:
an appropriate diet must be established, medications employed, and finally manual work applied
Around 550 BP Italian doctors started to scorn working with their hands
o They began to order their servants to perform what they thought should be done by hand
for the sick, while they only stood by as if they were architects.
o See them start to differentiate themselves from ancient physicians, abandoning the
technique of cooking and food preparation to those attending the sick, the composition
of medicine to druggists, and surgery to barbers.
Homer affirms that a medical man is more important many because they are primarily responsible for
treating dislocations, fractures, wounds, other lesions of continuity, and the flow of blood, and they
freed the noblest of Agamemnon’s warriors from arrowheads, spears, and other such afflictions (which
happen chiefly in war and always demand the careful work of a doctor).
For as long as physicians maintained that only the treatment of interior diseases was their concern, they
believed that knowledge of the viscera was all they needed, and they neglected the fabric of bones and
muscles and the nerves, veins and arteries that run throughout the bones and muscles, as if these were
irrelevant to them.
Moreover, when all operations were entrusted to barbers, not only did true knowledge of the viscera
perish from the medical profession, but the work of dissection completely died out.
Physicians did not undertake surgery, while those to whom the manual craft was entrusted were too
uneducated to understand what professors of dissection had written.
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Document Summary
Medicine began to be wasted by having its primary instrument, the application of the hand"s work in healing be so neglected that regular people and those completely untrained in the disciplines that serve the medical art. 3 medical sects: the logical, empiric, methodist. All of which were directed toward the preservation of health and the destruction of disease. 3 means of aid (triple system of healing): a system of diet - establishing a dietary regimen, medication - knowing and compounding medications, surgery. Medicine is the addition of things that are lacking and the removal of what is superfluous. Rarely does any disease occur that does not from the start require the threefold application of remedies: an appropriate diet must be established, medications employed, and finally manual work applied. Moreover, when all operations were entrusted to barbers, not only did true knowledge of the viscera perish from the medical profession, but the work of dissection completely died out.
