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A medical encyclopedia provides valuable health information, tools for managing your health, and support to those who seek information. Works of encyclopedic scope aim to convey the important accumulated knowledge for their subject domain, such as an encyclopaedia of medicine.
The history of medicine is both a study of medicine throughout history as well as a multidisciplinary field of study that seeks to explore and understand medical practices, both past and present, throughout human societies.
- Influences
- Advances
- Theories of Medicine
- Medical Universities in Medieval Europe
- Medical Practitioners
- Hospital System
- Later Developments
- Battlefield Medicine
- See Also
- Further Reading
Hippocratic medicine
The Western medical tradition often traces its roots directly to the Ancient Greek civilization, much like the foundation of all of Western society. The Greeks certainly laid the foundation for Western medical practice but much more of Western medicine can be traced to the Near East, Germanic, and Celtic cultures. The Greek medical foundation comes from a collection of writings known today as the Hippocratic Corpus. Remnants of the Hippocratic Corpus survive in modern medicine in forms like t...
Temple healing
The Greeks had been influenced by their Egyptian neighbors, in terms of medical practice in surgery and medication. However, the Greeks also absorbed many folk healing practices, including incantations and dream healing. In Homer's epic poems Iliad and Odyssey, the Greek gods are implicated as the cause of plagues or widespread disease and that those maladies could be cured by praying to them. The religious side of Greek medical practice is clearly manifested in the cult of Asclepius, whom Ho...
Pagan and folk medicine
Some of the medicine in the Middle Ages had its roots in Pagan and folk practices. This influence was highlighted by the interplay between Christian theologians who adopted aspects of Pagan and folk practices and chronicled them in their own works. The practices adopted by Christian medical practitioners around the 2nd century CE, and their attitudes toward Pagan and folk traditions, reflected an understanding of these practices, especially humoralism and herbalism. The practice of medicine i...
The Middle Ages contributed a great deal to medical knowledge. This period contained progress in surgery, medical chemistry, dissection, and practical medicine. The Middle Ages laid the ground work for later, more significant discoveries. There was a slow but constant progression in the way that medicine was studied and practiced. It went from appr...
Although each of these theories has distinct roots in different cultural and religious traditions, they were all intertwined in the general understanding and practice of medicine. For example, the Benedictine abbess and healer, Hildegard of Bingen, claimed that black bile and other humour imbalances were directly caused by presence of the Devil and...
Medicine was not a formal area of study in the early medieval era, but it grew in response to the proliferation of translated Greek and Arabic medical texts in the 11th century. Western Europe also experienced economic, population and urban growth in the 12th and 13th centuries leading to the ascent of medieval medical universities. The University ...
Members of religious orders were major sources of medical knowledge and cures. There appears to have been some controversy regarding the appropriateness of medical practice for members of religious orders. The Decree of the Second Lateran Council of 1139 advised the religious to avoid medicine because it was a well-paying job with higher social sta...
In the Medieval period the term hospital encompassed hostels for travellers, dispensaries for poor relief, clinics and surgeries for the injured, and homes for the blind, lame, elderly, and mentally ill. Monastic hospitals developed many treatments, both therapeutic and spiritual. Hospitals began to appear in great numbers in France and England. Fo...
High medieval surgeons like Mondino de Liuzzipioneered anatomy in European universities and conducted systematic human dissections. Unlike pagan Rome, high medieval Europe did not have a complete ban on human dissection. However, Galenic influence was still so prevalent that Mondino and his contemporaries attempted to fit their human findings into ...
Camp and movement
In order for an army to be in good fighting condition, it must maintain the health of its soldiers. One way of doing this is knowing the proper location to set up camp. Military camps were not to be set up in any sort of marshy region. Marsh lands tend to have standing water, which can draw in mosquitos. Mosquitos, in turn, can carry deadly disease, such as malaria. As the camp and troops were needed to be moved, the troops would be wearing heavy soled shoes in order to prevent wear on soldie...
Bowers, Barbara S. ed. The Medieval Hospital and Medical Practice(Ashgate, 2007); 258pp; essays by scholarsGetz, Faye. Medicine in the English Middle Ages. (Princeton University Press, 1998). ISBN 0-691-08522-6Hartnell, Jack (2019). Medieval Bodies: Life, Death and Art in the Middle Ages. Wellcome Collection. ISBN 978-1781256800.Mitchell, Piers D. Medicine in the Crusades: Warfare, Wounds, and the Medieval Surgeon(Cambridge University Press, 2004) 293 pp.Medicine. Medicine is the science [1] and practice [2] of caring for patients, managing the diagnosis, prognosis, prevention, treatment, palliation of their injury or disease, and promoting their health. Medicine encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness.
Doctor of Medicine (abbreviated M.D., from the Latin Medicinae Doctor) is a medical degree, the meaning of which varies between different jurisdictions. In the United States, and some other countries, the M.D. denotes a professional degree. This generally arose because many in 18th-century medical professions trained in Scotland, which used the ...
Beginning. References. History of medicine. The history of medicine is the study of the evolution of medical treatments, practices, and knowledge over time. Not much is known about medicine in prehistoric times when there were no written records, but it is clear that it was very different in different places.
May 20, 2024 · medicine, the practice concerned with the maintenance of health and the prevention, alleviation, or cure of disease. The World Health Organization at its 1978 international conference held in the Soviet Union produced the Alma-Ata Health Declaration, which was designed to serve governments as a basis for planning health care that would reach ...
