---
title: "History of medicine"
chunk: 8/17
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_medicine"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:00:03.179404+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

After 400 CE, the study and practice of medicine in the Western Roman Empire went into deep decline. Medical services were provided, especially for the poor, in the thousands of monastic hospitals that sprang up across Europe, but the care was rudimentary and mainly palliative. Most of the writings of Galen and Hippocrates were lost to the West, with the summaries and compendia of St. Isidore of Seville being the primary channel for transmitting Greek medical ideas. The Carolingian Renaissance brought increased contact with Byzantium and a greater awareness of ancient medicine, but only with the Renaissance of the 12th century and the new translations coming from Muslim and Jewish sources in Spain, and the fifteenth-century flood of resources after the fall of Constantinople did the West fully recover its acquaintance with classical antiquity.
The Carolingian Renaissance served as a starting point for incorporating ancient medicine into the early Middle Ages. One work which stands out in the historical timeline is the Lorscher Arzneibuch, a product of the scriptorium at the Lorsch monastery, copied between 784 through the early 9th century. To bolster confidence in medicine, the author of this apologetic work reasoned that medicines were created from earth materials, and that some of these materials, such as balm, were mentioned in Scripture. This example of borrowing late antique texts was part of how the Carolingian Empire reasoned through ancient knowledge and applied this knowledge to its Christian empire.
In late Antiquity, using medical knowledge from the ancient world was part of a collective shift of intellectual, socio-cultural and religious awareness; however, the use of ancient recipes was impacted by a lack of available ingredients. There is a dearth of evidence regarding recipes and practical therapy in the Carolingian era. In the Carolingian Renaissance, melding ancient ways with the early Middle Ages did present challenges of interpretation and practicality. Additionally, as the Carolingian Renaissance was part of the construction of the Holy Roman Empire, it was paramount that medicine continued to blend with Christianity. Appropriating classical or late antique/early Medieval medical knowledge gained traction within this era when it was emphasized that healing came from God.
Greek and Roman taboos had meant that dissection was usually banned in ancient times, but in the Middle Ages it changed: medical teachers and students at Bologna began to open human bodies, and Mondino de Luzzi (c. 1275–1326) produced the first known anatomy textbook based on human dissection.
Wallis identifies a prestige hierarchy with university educated physicians on top, followed by learned surgeons; craft-trained surgeons; barber surgeons; itinerant specialists such as dentist and oculists; empirics; and midwives.

==== Institutions ====
The first medical schools were opened in the 9th century, most notably the Schola Medica Salernitana at Salerno in southern Italy. The cosmopolitan influences from Greek, Latin, Arabic, and Hebrew sources gave it an international reputation as the Hippocratic City. Students from wealthy families came for three years of preliminary studies and five of medical studies. The medicine, following the laws of Federico II, that he founded in 1224 the university and improved the Schola Salernitana, in the period between 1200 and 1400, it had in Sicily (so-called Sicilian Middle Ages) a particular development so much to create a true school of Jewish medicine.
As a result of which, after a legal examination, was conferred to a Jewish Sicilian woman, Virdimura, wife of another physician Pasquale of Catania, the historical record of before woman officially trained to exercise of the medical profession.
At the University of Bologna the training of physicians began in 1219. The Italian city attracted students from across Europe. Taddeo Alderotti built a tradition of medical education that established the characteristic features of Italian learned medicine and was copied by medical schools elsewhere.Turisanus (d. 1320) was his student.
The University of Padua was founded about 1220 by walkouts from the University of Bologna, and began teaching medicine in 1222. It played a leading role in the identification and treatment of diseases and ailments, specializing in autopsies and the inner workings of the body. Starting in 1595, Padua's famous anatomical theatre drew artists and scientists studying the human body during public dissections. The intensive study of Galen led to critiques of Galen modeled on his own writing, as in the first book of Vesalius's De humani corporis fabrica. Andreas Vesalius held the chair of Surgery and Anatomy (explicator chirurgiae) and in 1543 published his anatomical discoveries in De Humani Corporis Fabrica. He portrayed the human body as an interdependent system of organ groupings. The book triggered great public interest in dissections and caused many other European cities to establish anatomical theatres.
By the thirteenth century, the medical school at Montpellier began to eclipse the Salernitan school. In the 12th century, universities were founded in Italy, France, and England, which soon developed schools of medicine. The University of Montpellier in France and Italy's University of Padua and University of Bologna were leading schools. Nearly all the learning was from lectures and readings in Hippocrates, Galen, Avicenna, and Aristotle. In later centuries, the importance of universities founded in the late Middle Ages gradually increased, e.g. Charles University in Prague (established in 1348), Jagiellonian University in Kraków (1364), University of Vienna (1365), Heidelberg University (1386) and University of Greifswald (1456).

== Early modern medicine ==

=== Places ===