Ancients and Moderns in the Medical Sciences

From Hippocrates to Harvey

Roger French

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN: 9780860788348
• eBook ISBN: 9781040250822
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

The theme of this book is the growth of the European tradition of medical theory, from the early Middle Ages until its collapse in the seventeenth century. Central to this tradition were ancient texts and the respect accorded to the ancients themselves by the moderns, the teachers and practitioners of medicine of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. The chapters examine how the ancient texts formed a resource for later medical men and how as a consequence they were sought out, translated and used. Three matters receive particular attention: the classroom culture by which the teachers perpetuated their pupil's faith in the ancient texts; the use of learning and argumentation by which the university doctors secured their reputation; and medical astrology as a prognostic technique. The story ends when the faith that had been given to Aristotle and Galen, and which held the medical tradition together, was broken, partly by the new natural philosophy and partly by the discovery of the circulation of the blood.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Page
• Half Title
• Front
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Acknowledgements
• I Greek fragments of the lost books of Galen’s Anatomical ProceduresSudhoffs Archiv 62. Wiesbaden, 1978
• II De Juvamentis Memborum and the reception of Galenic physiological anatomyIsis 70. Chicago, 1979
• III An origin for the bone text of the ‘five-figure series’Sudhoffs Archiv 68. Wiesbaden, 1984
• IV A note on the anatomical access us of the Middle AgesMedical History 23. London, 1979
• V Fortelling the future: Arabic astrology and English medicine in the late twelfth centuryIsis 87. Chicago, 1996
• VI Astrology in medical practicePractical Medicine from Salerno to the Black Death, ed. L. Garcia-Ballester, R. French, J. Arrizabalaga and A. Cunningham. Cambridge, 1994
• VII The use of Alfred of Shareshill’s commentary on De Plantis in university teaching in the thirteenth centuryViator 28. 1997
• VIII Gentile da Foligno and the via medicorumThe Light of Nature, ed. J.D. North and J.J. Roche. Dordrecht, 1985
• IX The medical ethics of Gabriel de ZerbiDoctors and Ethics: The Earlier Historical Setting of Professional Ethics, ed. A. Wear, J. Geyer-Kordesch and R. French. Amsterdam/Atlanta, 1994
• X Berengario da Carpi and the use of commentary in anatomical teachingThe Medical Renaissance of the Sixteenth Century, ed. A. Wear, R. French and I. Lonie. Cambridge, 1985
• XI Pliny and Renaissance medicineScience in the Early Roman Empire: Pliny the Elder, his Sources and Influence, ed. R. French and F. Greenaway. London, 1986
• XII The languages of William Harvey’s natural philosophyJournal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 49. Oxford, 1994
• Index