Transcript THE HISTORY OF MEDICINE

EUROPIAN MEDICINE DURING RENAISSANCE
BY
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GROUP-2
LAKSHMY V.P
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Medicine of the Renaissance era in Europe, from around 1400 to
around 1750. The Renaissance marked a change of direction for
medical knowledge and practice following the stagnation
of medieval medicine in the preceding period. A rebirth of interest
in the pursuit of new knowledge and scientific enquiry began,
similar to that found in ancient Greek medicine. The known world
expanded for Europeans, as they discovered the Americas and
explored the continents of Asia and Africa, making contact with
new peoples and civilizations. New medicinal plants and
treatments were brought back to Europe and new technologies
such as the microscope emerged, influencing medical
development. The spirit of discovery encouraged scientific
research that overturned the traditional practices of the Middle
Ages, which had been based on the classical teachings of Egypt,
Greece, and Rome.
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Medicine practiced prior to renaissance period was more an art
than a science . Though some jewels of real scientific lusture are
witnessed in the writings of Galen and Hippocrates, their followers
could not develop the real scientific attitude of mind . The practice
of medicine degenerated into a medley of some positive scientific
facts and multitude of fads and fancies unwarranted assumptions,
imperfect and biased observations, hasty generalizations, false
conclusions and most absurd and often torturesome therapeutic
practices. Reason came to be overshadowed by strange traditional
beliefs and superstitions; authority claimed a superior and often
implicit allegiance from the medical profession. But a new spirit
was awakened in the European mind during the renaissance
period- which goes by the name of the scientific spirit – which had
its repercussions in every field of human knowledge. This period is
rightly called the age of reasons and medicine also came under its
way
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Medicine remained dominated by the teachings of the church but
physicians began to learn more about the human body. They read books
translated from Arabic medical texts and began to study anatomy in
scientific and systematic way. AndreasVesalius and Leonardo Da Vinci
dissected human bodies and made the first anatomical drawings. These
helped in understanding the organs and systems of the human body. The
church did not permit the dissection of 'God fearing bodies' so it was
often the bodies of criminals or 'sinners' that were used. Doctors learned
about anatomy from watching these dissections. Sometimes the criminal
was alive at the start of proceedings as part of their punishment.During
the Renaissance, the human body was regarded as a creation of God and
the ancient Greek view of the four humors prevailed.
Sickness was due to an imbalance in these humors and treatments, such
as bleeding the patient or inducing vomiting, were aimed at restoring the
balance of these four humors. In 1628, William Harvey published his new
theory that the heart acts as a muscular pump which circulates blood
around the body in the blood vessels. Discoveries during the Renaissance
laid the foundations for a change in thinking
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At the beginning of the Renaissance the theories of Galen, a Greek
physician of the 2nd century AD, were still accepted as fact by
most doctors. The Catholic Church in Europe continued to
promote Galen's anatomical ideas as infallible, and its control over
medical practice and training in the universities remained strong,
hindering progress. However, as the Renaissance in learning took
hold in Europe, and inventions such as the microscope appeared,
leading doctors began to investigate the anatomy and physiology
of the body. Classical theories were put to the test of thorough
investigation for the first time.
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The ideas of Galen, however, were hard to overturn. His theories
had been the accepted wisdom of the medical world for over a
thousand years. Even when Galen appeared to be wrong, doctors
would defend his writings by stating that they had been
mistranslated or that crucial parts had been lost.
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A flurry of new knowledge and inventions
helped to advance medicine quickly, during
the Renaissance. There were no instruments
yet to observe bacteria, and thus create a
need for cheap urbane scrubs. However,
diagrams of the human body and the printing
press both had a huge influence on the world
of medicine. Thus, doctors had a better
comprehension of how the human body
functioned, than during any previous era in
Europe's history.
During the previous Middle Ages, the medical world
considered Galen's writings to be infallible. Galen was an
ancient Greek living in Rome, who had developed the
concepts of Hippocrates, "The Father of Medicine."
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practical and academic approach to training in their
profession. Medical students studied from books with
realistic diagrams of humans. In addition to better books,
doctors-in-training also had access to more of them,
thanks to the invention of the printing press. In fact,
universities even permitted students to dissect humans,
towards the end of the Renaissance. This practice had
previously been limited to animals.
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During the Renaissance, people still held to some spiritual
reasoning regarding diseases. For instance, people were
unaware that bacteria existed, and could spread from
person-to-person. However, logic became king, due to a
new wealth of knowledge available, and an efficient way
to distribute it faster-the printing press. In addition, the
training for surgical procedures greatly improved.
Apprentices would learn surgical techniques, from an
active surgeon. Interestingly, universities themselves
failed to supply doctors-in-training with these skills.
Nevertheless, the improvements in textbooks about
human anatomy significantly boosted the complexity of
the surgeries that doctors did.
While the Renaissance ushered in a new era of
medical knowledge and skills, not everyone was
impressed. During the Renaissance, home
remedies remained a vital aspect of medical
treatment, for many people. In fact, some people
still sought treatments from local shaman who
lacked formal training in the medical profession.
Also, many "old-school" doctors and the Catholic
Church still adhered to the teachings of Galen.
However, within time, medical advances during
the Renaissance would revolutionize the whole
professional.
 The Renaissance was clearly an era of
enlightenment and developments. Besides the
fantastic output in the arts, the medical profession
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In 1531 Johannes Guinter published a Latin translation
of Galen's On Anatomical Procedures, in which Galen
stressed the need to dissect the human body to learn
about anatomy. Galen's understanding of human
anatomy had been deduced from dissections of
animals such as the barbary ape, leading to numerous
errors. His previously unknown approval of human
dissection, and his recognition that his work on the
human body had been hindered, challenged the ban
on dissection imposed by the Catholic Church, and
made proper investigation of the human body more
acceptable. Doctors such as Andreas Vesalius, Matteo
Realdo Colombo, Geronimo Fabricius, and
William Harvey all used dissection, observation, and
experimentation to come up with new discoveries and
theories of human anatomy. Vesalius demonstrated
that many of Galen's anatomical theories, such as the
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The majority of people were too poor to be
treated by trained doctors. Major cities had
hospitals. For example, the Santa Maria Nuova
in Florence, treated wealthy patients. These
hospitals were amongst the first medical schools
in Europe to start teaching medicine. Surgery
improved and techniques such as tying wounds
to stop bleeding began to be used.Previously,
bleeding was stopped by cauterizing, or
burning, the wound with red hot metal.Surgical
instruments remained basic. A surgeon would
perform operations with the most basic set of
He was originally a god gifted artist. His
appreciation of naturalism &deep insight
made him to contribute remarkable
drawing of human anatomical pictures.he
was first to demonstrate the ventricles of
brain by wax injection and to depict
correctly the foetus and its membrane
within the uterus. Originally he engaged
to study the bones muscles in relation to
art &persued his investigation to study
the deeper parts of the body, viscera,
brain blood vessels and more specially
the heart
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Vesalius successfully challenged the general ban on
dissection by the church, which had arisen from the
religious belief that to cut up a dead body was
sacrilegious. The only dissections that had been
permissible were those undertaken on the corpses of
criminals as part of their punishment, and these had
been carried out purely to support Galen's theories. By
the 16th century the main pressure to maintain the
ban on dissection came from senior university
professors, who were afraid that the ideas of Galen
would be challenged by new discoveries. Vesalius,
who distrusted the teachings of Galen, decided to
make his own observations when he became
professor of surgery at the University of Padua in 1537.
He began to teach his students using the dissection of
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'In the 16th century the most disputed person of the time was
PARACELSUS. While still a youth Paracelsus became aware of
many of the conflicting currents of his age. His father was a
physician in Einsiedeln and he practiced in a number of mining
towns. The boy surely learned some practical medicine at home
through observing his father. It is likely that he learned some folk
medicine as well. He also picked up some alchemy from his father
who had an interest in the subject. And in mining towns he would
have observed metallurgical practices as well as the diseases that
afflicted the men who worked the mines
Traditionally it has been said that Paracelsus was taught by several
bishops and the occultist abbot of Sponheim, Johannes
Trithemius. At the age of fourteen the boy left home to begin a
long period of wandering. He apparently visited a number of
universities, but there is no proof that he ever took a medical
degree. As an adult, however, he picked up practical medical
knowledge by working as a surgeon in a number of the mercenary
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Among many others still remembered.Ambroise
Pare for his surgical attempts.
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Pierre Franco was first person to perform a subpubic
lithotomy.wrote an article on hernia. He had great
success on operation on cataract. Free
Jacques&Frere Jean who practised
surgery.Amongthe many anatomist two
names Gabriel Fallopius (1526-62) for his discovery of
AQUEDUCT and tubes which bear his
name Bartolomeus Eustachius who was head of the
Department of Anatomy at Rome is remembered for
accurate illustration of THORACIC DUCT , CILLARY
MUSCLES , details of FASCIAL MUSCLES, LARNYX,
KIDNEY.Thomas Vicary was the first master of the
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Instead of applying traditional treatments without question,
doctors came up with new practices based on experimentation.
Ambroise Paré, a French military surgeon, introduced modern
principles to the treatment of wounds. He rejected the old method
of treating gunshot wounds or amputations by cauterization
(sealing with heat) as unnecessarily painful and likely to lead to
infection or death. Paré developed the use of ligatures, in which he
sealed wounds by sewing up the veins with silk thread rather than
applying boiling oil or a hot iron. Paré also used a mixture of rose
oil, egg yolk, and turpentine to soothe and heal exposed flesh
wounds. Paré's new treatments resulted from his rational
approach to the fact that many patients were killed or scarred by
the old methods. Paré's La Méthode de traicter les playes faites par
les arquebuses et aultres bastons á feu/Method of Treating Wounds
Inflicted by Arquebuses and Other Guns (1545) eventually became a
standard work for army surgeons in Europe. He published other
works, including Cinq livres de chirugie/Five Books of Surgery (1572)
and a defence of his ideas in Apology and Treatise of Ambroise
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In 1628, William Harvey published his new
theory that the heart acts as a muscular
pump which circulates blood around the body
in the blood vessels. Discoveries during the
Renaissance laid the foundations for a change
in thinking leading to the view that the body
is made up of specialised systems that work
together; the basis of medical knowledge
that we still see today..
Paré's ideas spread far more rapidly than they would have done in
previous centuries because of the introduction of the printing
press to Europe by Johannes Gutenberg in the 1450s. Books had
previously been extremely expensive, as each page had to be hand
written. This slowed down the spread of new ideas and
encouraged doctors to carry on using the information in texts that
were already available. The introduction of the printing press
meant that books could be produced more quickly and less
expensively. It enabled the rapid spread of new ideas, encouraging
doctors to try out new methods.
 At the same time, the greater naturalism in Renaissance art and
interest in human anatomy and perspective, led by artists such as
Leonardo da Vinci, resulted in more accurate illustrations of the
human body. It was now possible to include detailed anatomical
drawings with labels in the books published by doctors. Readers
were able to gain a greater understanding of the theories and
explanations in the books. Vesalius's celebrated De humani corporis
fabrica/On the Structure of the Human Body, published in 1543,
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The medical discoveries and advances of the Renaissance only
affected a small portion of the population of Europe. For most the
practice of medicine remained unchanged, the only available and
affordable treatments being the traditional methods of herbal and
spiritual healing. People in villages and towns continued to visit
local men and women, who practised medical skills and cures
handed down by example and word of mouth through the ages.
Treatments bought from travelling fairs were still used without
any reference to the work of medical pioneers such as Paré or
Harvey. It would take decades before the anatomical and medical
knowledge of the Renaissance filtered down to the poor.
 Even the richest and most powerful people in Europe were still
being treated using traditional classical and medieval methods
well into the Renaissance. King Charles II, who died in 1685 at the
age of 55 (possibly of a stroke and subsequent brain
haemorrhage), had the most educated and respected doctors in
Britain to treat him. However, the methods they used included
bleeding and laxatives, remedies used by the ancient Greek
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