MEDIEVAL MEDICINE

Will Durant, whose epochal study of history, covers the centuries involved for this essay with the title The Age of Faith, actually separates medicine of the times into Christian science, as well as the science of Jews and the science of the Arab world. It would seem, therefore, that medicine depends on religious affiliation, somehow. The facts tend to show that Christianity's Dark Ages created a medical and scientific vacuum, filled only by Arabic and Jewish physicians. During the Dark Ages, medical practices "disappeared". "Scientific medicine survived the Dark Ages in the West chiefly through Jewish physicians, who circulated Greco-Arabic medical knowledge in Christendom" (Durant 1950 998). At the same time, the use of leeches and blood-letting continued, As Durant describes it (p. 999) hot baths were a favorite prescription, and nearly every illness brought about some sort of "curable" diet. There was considerable drug use, the drugs mostly imported from Islamic nations, and keeping their Islamic names. This, however, seemed reserved for those who could afford medicine, while most of the West dwelled in extreme poverty during these years, and plagues and sickness pervaded these poor communities with little or no hope for survival by practicing medicine experts.

Then, there was a sort of revolution in physician training. There was a need, especially with the development of plague-like communicable diseases, as well as a growth in total populat

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