Overview: Life Sciences and Medicine 700-1449

The Ancient World

The Greeks had made important contributions to the life sciences, including writings on medicine by Hippocrates (c.460-c.377 b.c.), work on plant and animal classification by Aristotle (384-322 b.c.), and books on anatomy by Galen (c.130-c.200). In the Roman world, however, interest in science and medicine declined. With the final collapse of the Roman Empire in a.d. 476, Europe entered a long period when scientific knowledge and inquiry were largely absent. The Church assumed a rigid mantle of authority, refusing to recognize any scientific explanations for natural phenomena that did not match its own particular interpretation of Scripture, and frowned on inquiries that might prove otherwise.

Medicine

From the eighth to the eleventh centuries, the quality of medicine in Europe was so poor that many sick people sought relief from miracle healers and by making pilgrimages to holy shrines. They also consulted astrologers who studied the supposed influence of stars and planets on human conditions.

In the Arab world, however, medical science had made great strides. The founding of Islam in the seventh century had established a sophisticated culture that valued learning and inquiry. Arab scholars translated the works of ancient Greek writers into Arabic, keeping the work of earlier physicians alive. Several of these translators also made important contributions of their own, particularly in medicine.

Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakariya' ar-Razi, known in the West as Rhazes (c.865-c.923) was a physician who carefully observed the characteristics of measles and smallpox and noted how they differed from each other, introducing the idea that there were different infectious diseases with identifiably different symptoms.

The Arab physician, Ibn an-Nafis (c.1210-1280), studied anatomy and discovered that blood circulates between the heart and the lungs. He criticized some of Galen's anatomical observations at a time when Galen was still considered infallible in the West. Yet another Arab physician, ibn Sina, known in Europe as Avicenna (980-1037), wrote the Canon of Medicine, which became an important medical text for hundreds of years, not only in the Middle East, but in Europe after it was translated into Latin.

Many ancient Greek and Roman medical texts were not reintroduced into Europe until the Crusades brought contact with the Arab world; these texts were eventually translated from Arabic into Latin. The works of Galen, Hippocrates, and Aristotle once again became important influences on the study of medicine and the life sciences in Europe, especially from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries.

Medical Schools and Hospitals

Two institutions were crucial to the limited scientific and medical progress made in during the Middle Ages: the university medical school and the hospital. The first medical school was founded at the University of Salerno in Italy in the ninth century. Around 1170, one of its professors, a physician named Roger of Salerno, wrote a practical guide to surgery. Several other medieval surgeons wrote important texts, including Guido Lanfranchi in Italy and Henri de Mondeville (1260-1320) and Guy de Chauliac (c.1300-1368) in France. But despite these studies, physicians performed less and less surgery, often leaving it to barbers. Not until the Renaissance was surgery firmly reunited with other medical practices.

Salerno remained the most distinguished medical school for over 200 years. Its success led to the establishment of medical schools in other cities, including Paris and Montpellier in France and Padua in Italy, each of which would play an important role in the development of medical knowledge in the Renaissance. Toward the end of the Middle Ages, it was at such institutions that anatomical dissections of human cadavers became a part of medical education. This led to more empirical observation and less reliance on the writings of ancient physicians such as Galen—discoveries that ultimately corrected numerous errors. This trend was slowed by the fact that dissection was illegal in many places and cadavers often had to be obtained clandestinely. Even where it was legal, the main source of cadavers was limited to the bodies of executed criminals.

Exposure to the Arab world during the Crusades was a major factor in the development of hospitals. Islamic ideals of charity and public welfare encouraged the establishment of institutions where the sick could be given aid and where those with infectious diseases could be isolated to prevent contagion. Using this model, hospitals were established throughout Europe by the Church, where religious orders cared for the sick and the poor. Conditions in these hospitals, however, were extremely crude. It was not uncommon, for example, for more than one patient to share a bed. In thirteenth-century London the first institution for the mentally ill, Bethlem Royal Hospital was created. Its name, commonly shortened to "Bedlam," has come to mean a chaotic, disordered place.

Infectious Diseases

Contagious diseases created severe problems throughout this period. Leprosy was common, though sometimes confused with other skin ailments. Lepers were shunned and, since the disease was considered by many to be the result of sinful behavior, were often considered not only physically but spiritually diseased. Smallpox, measles, and other diseases were also common.

Beginning in 1348, recurring epidemics of bubonic plague killed one third of the entire European population, often wiping out whole villages and causing enormous social and economic upheaval. Though the role of rats and lice in transmission of the plague was not understood (and would not be known until the end of the nineteenth century), improved sanitation did seem to slow its spread. This observation led to the establishment of sanitary laws in 1388 by Richard II of England (1367-1400). It was also at this time that the practice of quarantining arose, preventing those who had been infected or who had contact with the infected, from mixing with the rest of the population until they were no longer considered contagious.

Botany and Zoology

During the Middle Ages, botany and zoology were at a very rudimentary stage of development. Plants were of interest primarily as sources of medicine. Most of the texts upon which physicians and others relied on for information about plants were copies of a book written by a first-century Greek writer named Dioscorides (c. 40-c. 90), who described the medicinal uses of about 500 plants. These books, called herbals, were often illustrated, but with images so crude that it was frequently impossible to identify a plant on the basis of its picture. There were also books called bestiaries that described and pictured exotic animals, some of which, like the unicorn, were imaginary or based on erroneous descriptions brought back to Europe by travelers.

By the twelfth century, however, interest in the living world had reawakened. Plants began to be studied not only for their medicinal uses but also for their structures and relationships to other organisms; there was also increased interest in animals. One of the most important figures in the life sciences during the Middle Ages was Albertus Magnus (c.1200-1280), a Dominican bishop and teacher of Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274). Like others interested in the living world, he was greatly influenced by Aristotle's biological writings, but Albertus Magnus also made many original observations and was a source of useful information for later scholars. His research legitimized study of the natural world as a science within the Church; so revered was Albertus that he came to be known as "the Great One" (Magnus) during his own lifetime. Another keen observer of animals was the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II (1194-1250), who wrote a book on falconry, the art of hunting of with birds of prey called falcons.

The Future

By the middle of the fifteenth century, interest in the natural world was increasing. Universities became mature institutions that served as centers of new studies in anatomy, botany, and zoology. With the dawn of the Renaissance, one of the driving forces for studies of the natural world would come from artists such as Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) and Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528), who had interests in all these areas of the life sciences.

ROBERT HENDRICK