Medicine in Medieval Universities

“The Faculty of Medicine”

In Nancy Siraisi’s article on the faculty of medicine in the medieval university, she describes the university as centers of medical activity, firmly set in place over the 12^th and 13^th centuries. She begins by acknowledging that only a small fraction of medical practitioners were university educated. In fact, university-trained physicians faced competition from various pharmacists, surgeons, midwives, non-educated physicians in addition to those who offered spiritual or supernatural remedies. Additionally, many practicing physicians without university degrees had access to university materials and were mostly literate and had many prosperous patients. But largely, the university trained physician occupied the highest wealth and social status of those in the medical field, whose clientele were frequently noble, wealthy and royal. Yet treatments or success rates were unlikely to have differed greatly in administering cures. However, medical schools still thrives as the elite institutions of medical education, producing rich medical literature, insisting on health as an object of intellectual enquiry and creating an environment for legitimate dissection of bodies.

Before 1500, there were three primary centers for medical education: Paris, Bologna, and Montpellier. There were of course other places where medicine could be studied, but they did not achieve the same level of prominence. The organization of the faulty differed in different locations. The professors generally came from educated families and were men of means within their communities. They frequently drew a municipal salary and had other responsibilities outside of the university such as licensing medical practitioners. They were also called upon to perform autopsies or to give medical-legal opinions. Students came from all over Europe. When universities were established in other parts of Europe, it still did not diminish the status of these three schools as some students would in fact complete the arts portion of their education locally, and then travel for the prestigious medical portion. However, the majority of physicians received substantial training in the arts, however evidence indicates that only a few wrote extensively on their arts training once they had completed the minimum portion.

At these universities a substantial amount of Islamic medical texts such as the comprehensive Canon of Avicenna were available in Latin and served as a basis for much teaching. Additionally, Hippocratic and Galenic texts and their commentaries were universally used as texts. These books only served as a portion of the academics as masters frequently gave lectures of deviating subjects and there was usually a great deal of private study. The curriculum was aimed primarily at training practitioners which was for many the most lucrative endeavor. Central concepts taught included: the balance of the elementary qualities of hot, wet, cold and dry in the body, the influence of the heavenly bodies on terrestrial events-in fact many physicians studied astrology as part of their curriculum.

There appear to be only a few differences in the characteristics of each school. For example, Paris did not train surgeons, and Montpellier put more emphasis on the Hippocratic than Paris. However they all used similar texts and though it took 3-8 years to finish depending on the curriculum, all generally covered the same material in both medicine and in their arts education. In general university medicine played a large part in shaping the approach to medical texts, scientific understanding and healing practices of the period.