Читать книгу Medicine in the Middle Ages. Extracts from "Le Moyen Age Medical" by Dr. Edmond Dupouy; translated by T. C. Minor онлайн

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The Arabian schools of Dschondisabur, Bagdad, Damascus, and Cordova were founded and became flourishing institutions of learning, thanks to a few Nestorian Greeks and Jews who were attracted to these centers of learning; such men as Aaron, Rhazes, Haly-Abas, Avicenna, Avenzoar, Averrhoes, Albucasis, and other writers, who continued the work left by the Greeks, leaving remarkable books on medicine and surgery. Unfortunately the ordinance of Islamism prevented these scientists from following anatomical work too closely, and consequently limited the progress they might otherwise have made in medicine.[1]

What occurred in Western Europe during this period of transition? The torch of science was extinguished; the sacred fire on the altar of learning only remained a flickering emblem whose pale light was carefully guarded in the chapel of monasteries. Medicine was abandoned to the priests, and all practice naturally fell into an empirical and blind routine. “The physician-clergy,” says Sprengel, “resorted in the majority of cases to prayers and holy water, to the invocations of saints and martyrs, and inunction with sacred ointments. These monks were unworthy of the name of doctor—they were, in fact, nothing else than fanatical hospital attendants.”