“Storia della medicina” nei secoli XIII-XV

Abstract

The main aim of this essay is to identify the ways in which scholastic physicians (in the 13th-15th centuries) endeavored to organize and “historically” described the medical knowledge, in doctrinal commentaries, in Practicae, and in surgical and pharmacological texts. These authors adopted a mixed approach, both chronological and epistemological, in order to give an orderly framework to the development stages of their discipline. This gave rise to a framework in which ancients and moderns, progress and stability, tradition and novelty, often appeared as opposed to each other; at the same time, however, these authors tried in a variety of ways to amalgamate the poles of auctoritas and inventio, of traditio and novitas. The first humanistic “histories of medicine” gave birth to a new and original genre (the “history of”) that superseded and replaced the scholastic physicians’ mode of writing, with its use of random mentions and allusions, however these Renaissance histories – notwithstanding their better erudition, more harmonious Latin, and a wealth of classical knowledge – did not modify substantially the general framework outlined by medieval physicians.