Medical History IX:  Medieval West: The spreading of Galenic medicine

“The Greatest Benefit to Mankind – A Medical History of Humanity from Antiquity to the Present” by Roy Porter was published in 1999. It’s a magnificent 848-page book that I’ve now read. Many people, I’ve discovered, own a copy but have dipped into it rather than read it through. I hope that I might do medical history, the world at large, students of medicine (surely all of us), and Roy, whom I knew and who died suddenly aged 55 in 2002, a service by posting extracts of his book on my website. The extracts might persuade you to read the book. The medical thread was, however, unbroken, even if it frayed and threatened to snap. Through what are known as the Dark Ages medical manuscripts were at least preserved, copied and studied within the sanctuaries provided by abbeys and cathedral schools. The medicine they kept alive was, however, but a shadow of its brilliance in Galen’s day: a basic survival kit when book-learning itself was under threat. The Salerno medical school was supposedly…