Medicine before the Plague
Practitioners and their Patients in the Crown of Aragon, 1285–1345

An account of the medical world in eastern Spain in the decades before the Black Death.

Michael R. McVaugh (Author)

9780521524544, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 11 July 2002

300 pages
23 x 15.5 x 2.3 cm, 0.485 kg

This book describes the medical world of the early fourteenth century through a study of the extensive archival material and contemporary writings which exist for eastern Spain in the decades before the Black Death. It describes the range of medical practice which then existed - a continuum ranging from scattered academic physicians to barbers and empirics - and gives evidence for the levels and numerical growth of these various occupations in early fourteenth-century communities (although it also emphasizes that occupational distinctions were not yet sharply drawn). The newly translated Greco-Arabic medical learning was beginning to spread through this continuum of practice, and the book argues that public enthusiasm for the new learned medicine led to the 'medicalization' of certain social and legal institutions, thus preparing a role for a medical profession in this society before its physicians had shown any consciousness of collective self-interest and identity.

List of tables
Preface
List of abbreviations
Introduction
1. The medical history of a royal family
2. Medieval health manpower
3. The success of medical learning
4. A spectrum of practice
5. The response to illness and the maintenance of health
6. Patient-practitioner relationships
7. Medicine's social role
Conclusion
Appendix
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: History of medicine [MBX]