During the ancient medical world, Hippocrates of Cos and Galen of Pergamon developed many medical theories, some based on religious belief, and they were taken to Medieval Europe where they were expanded upon. In this essay, I will cover medicine and Christianity, hospitals as centres for religion as well as healing, dissection, being a medical professional during both of the time periods and learned medicine.
Hippocrates of Cos (c. 450 – 370 BC) formed the basis of a medical sect in the ancient Greek world and many medical professionals have attributed their own medical knowledge as originating from Hippocrates. According to Plato, Hippocrates claimed that disease was unable to be alleviated without an understanding of either the entire body…show more content… In the ancient world, Galen performed dissections mainly on animals, especially sheep, apes, goats and pigs and as a result of this, drew many conclusions about the human body from his work with animals. For instance, Galen applied his learning of the rete mirabile within ungulates led him to the belief that it was also a feature of the human body. Similarly to this, in Medieval Salerno around 1120, anatomical dissection developed from firstly being based on animal dissection and the first recorded human dissection in Medieval Europe was performed by Mondino de’ Liuzzi at Bologna University in 1315. Experimental learning was the basis of Galen’s knowledge, as many of his predecessors had not partaken in what he was attempting to discover about anatomy. Contrary to this, universities were founded across Western Europe from c. 1200 onwards and start to offer high quality, professional practice and training in medicine using texts that are linked with Galen, using the knowledge that he gained from his own experiments and expanding on the information using a cadaver to dissect at a university. Although dissections occurred at universities, they were not always used for primarily medical or teaching purposes to begin with as they were…show more content… The university heavily influenced education across Europe during the 13th century and the medical school that formed in the already established school of Salerno just contributed to the “intellectual legacy” (Wear, 1992: 78) that was already in place and by 1300, the universities of Padua, Montpellier, Paris and Bologna had developed as fundamental institutions of medical learning. Universities succeeded schools and differed from them as unlike schools there was a large choice of subjects, an accustomed curriculum and a detectable degree set. In Medieval Europe, after much work had gone into translating Galen’s works, medicine that had been influenced by Greek healers had been the centre of a debate as to whether the 16th century reintroduced Galenic medicine but it was decided that it had formed the basis of learned