![]() The medical school at Montpellier traces its roots back to the tenth century, though the university was not founded until 1289. The medical faculty at Salerno permitted women to study there. A health spa as early as the second century, Salerno was surprisingly free of clerical control, even though it was very close to the famous and very powerful monastery of Monte Cassino. The most famous was the school of Salerno in southern Italy, reputedly founded by a Christian, an Arab, and a Jew. Additionally, people might have gone to the local witch or to the apothecary for healing potions.īy the twelfth century, there were medical schools throughout Europe. No monastic garden would have been complete without medicinal plants, and it was to monasteries that the sick went to obtain such herbs. In many cases, draughts were made up of many different herbs. Some plants were used for specific disorders, while others were credited with curing multiple diseases. His texts formed the basis of much of the herbal medicine practiced until 1500. Although the original text of Dioscorides is lost, there are many surviving copies. One cannot overestimate the importance of medicinal plants in the Middle Ages. Consequently, Arabs and Jews were renowned for the practice of medicine, and Arabic and Jewish doctors were often employed by kings (for example, James II of Aragon ). Many Greek texts were translated first into Arabic and then into Hebrew. The Arabs were the great translators and synthesizers of medical texts. Galenic theories had great longevity, prevailing in western Europe until the sixteenth century. ![]() To further his understanding of bodily functions, he performed animal and even human dissections and was able to demonstrate that the arteries carried blood rather than air. In the second century, Galen synthesized much of what has been attributed to Hippocrates. This was a practical text dealing with the medicinal use of more than 600 plants. In 65 A.D., Dioscorides, a Greek, wrote his Materia Medica ( 13.152.6). The body could be purged of excess by bleeding, cupping, and leeching-medical practices that continued throughout the Middle Ages. Hippocrates, considered the “father of Medicine,” described the body as made up of four humors-yellow bile, phlegm, black bile, and blood-and controlled by the four elements-fire, water, earth, and air. The practice of medicine in the Middle Ages was rooted in the Greek tradition. In the second century, Origen wrote, “For those who are adorned with religion use physicians as servants of God, knowing that He himself gave medical knowledge to men, just as He himself assigned both herbs and other things to grow on the earth.”
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