Story

The beginning of the history of the Middle Ages in Western Europe (as already noted above) is conventionally considered to be 476, when the last emperor of the Western Roman Empire, Romulus Augustul, was deposed.

At that time there was not a single state in North-Western Europe. Its lands were covered with dense forests and marshes, and the peoples inhabiting it (the Germans and Slavs) maintained tribal relations. '

In the first centuries of our era, Eurasia embraced "the great migration of nations": in search of better lands, numerous tribes moved from east to west and from north to south. The Western Roman Empire, weakened by that time, could not restrain the onslaught of the barbarians; and in v. they settled throughout her territory: the Visigoths — in Spain, the Ostrogoths — in Italy, the Franks — in Galin, the Angles and Saxons — in Britain, the Vandals — in North Africa. Slaves and colons (lat. Colonus - farmer, dependent on his master) went over to the side of the conquerors.

The barbarian peoples who conquered the territory of the Western Roman Empire were at the stage of the formation of classes and states - the process of the formation of civilizations was just beginning. Because of this, they could not become full-blooded successors and successors of Late Antique traditions. In order to master this culture, they needed time. That is why the feudal West for a long time lagged behind the medieval East, where the economic and cultural development of the 1st millennium of our era took place on a solid foundation of Eastern Roman and Byzantine traditions.

However, it would be unfair to think that the Middle Ages in Western Europe was a step backwards in the cultural history of mankind - Western European feudalism was the result of a synthesis of Roman and Germanic traditions that influenced each other (slave-owning, on the one hand, and communal-ancestral - on the other). The peoples of Western Europe have gone through a difficult path from tribal-tribal relations to developed feudalism, the formation of which was completed by the XI century. They created a kind of culture, which became the foundation of subsequent development.

Medieval scholasticism and medicine

In the period of the classical Middle Ages, the ideology of Western European society was determined primarily by the church. Until the middle of the XI century. the christian church was one. In 1054, it split into western (or Catholic) and eastern (or Orthodox), after which each of the churches became isolated, and they became completely independent.

According to Christian religion, knowledge has two levels: supernatural knowledge given in “revelation” and contained in the texts of the “Bible”, and natural - searched for by the human mind and expressed in the texts of Plato, Aristotle and some other ancient authors recognized or canonized by Christianity. The task of scientists was reduced only to the confirmation of these texts with new data.

On this basis, a medieval scholasticism (from the Greek. Schole — school) —a type of religious philosophy, characterized by the fundamental subordination of thought to the authority of the dogma of faith, was formed.

In the field of medicine, the main authorities were Galen, Hippocrates and Ibn Sina {lat. Avicerma). Their works, selected and reviewed by church ministers, were memorized by heart. Medieval scholastics excluded from Galen's teachings his outstanding experimental achievements in the field of the structure and functions of a living organism, while some of his theoretical ideas (on the focus of all life processes in the human body, on pneuma and supernatural forces) were raised to religious dogma and became the banner scholastic medicine of the Middle Ages. Thus arose galen and sn - a distorted, one-sided interpretation of the teachings of galen. The refutation of the galeraism, the restoration of the true content of the teachings of Galen, as well as the analysis and correction of his mistakes, required tremendous work and titanic efforts of many physicians of the Renaissance and the subsequent period.

Attempts to rethink or. rework sanctified by the church dogmas cruelly persecuted. An example of this is the fate of Roger Bacon (R. Bacon, 1215-1294) - an outstanding thinker of his time, a graduate of the University of Paris and Oxford, who turned to primary sources and an experienced method of research: he spent 24 years in prison and went out from there a very old man.

The activity of R. Bacon, who received the nickname “the wonderful doctor”, is closely connected with the development of the medieval world.

Often, alchemy is called pseudoscience. In fact, this is a natural historical stage of the formation of modern chemistry, which has passed several periods in its development (alchemy, iatrochemistry, phlogistics, etc.).

As already noted, the origins of alchemy go back to the art of ancient Egyptian priests, who made alloys of various metals (they included gold). "Metallic lands" were used in ancient Egypt for the manufacture of tools, jewelry and burial items. In the Leiden and Stockholm papyrus, found in 1828 during excavations in the city of Thebes. and relating to 300 AD e., described 250 recipes for the isolation and processing of chemicals. The art of the ancient Egyptians was perceived by the ancient Greeks, who translated the word "chymeia" as "insistence" or "pouring". In the VII century. The Arabs added the prefix "a!" (see p. 157), which was rejected only at the beginning of the 16th century.

The translation of Arabic alchemical manuscripts into Latin, which began in the eleventh century, prepared an "alchemical boom" in Western Europe. In the period from the XII to the XVI century. European alchemists discovered iron vitriol, ammonium carbonate, antimony and its compounds, mastered the methods of making paper and gunpowder. Having set themselves certain practical tasks, they developed many chemical methods and created a theory of matter corresponding to their time.

However, the deadening influence of scholasticism affected alchemy, and with it, pharmacy. The main goal of European medieval alchemy was the transformation of "base" metals into "noble" (gold and silver). It was believed that it occurs under the influence of the “philosopher's stone”, the efforts of many generations of alchemists were aimed at finding and discovering it. The "philosophical stone" was also attributed to the miraculous properties of healing from all diseases and the return of youth. Kings and grandees, theologians and doctors, and even people without specific occupations, began to study alchemy.

Nevertheless, genuine scientists of the period of the developed Middle Ages sought to approach the question of the transformation of substances from natural positions. Among them were Arnold of Wil-lanovs (see below), who wrote the treatise On Poisons, and Roger Bacon, author of the works The Power of Alchemy and The Mirror of Alchemy. “We should not resort to magical illusions,” wrote R. Bacon, “when the forces of science are enough to produce an action.” He was one of the first to criticize scholasticism and proclaimed experience as the sole criterion of knowledge. In the concept of "alchemy," he included the study of plants, soil, animals, as well as medicine. At that time, alchemy and medical art were in close contact with each other, wonderful doctors and pharmacists were at the same time great alchemists.

Education and Medicine

The first high schools in Western Europe appeared in Italy. The oldest among them is the Salerno Medical School, the foundation of which belongs to the 9th century. The school in Salerno (near Naples) had a secular character and continued the best traditions of ancient medicine. Her fame was so great that even after the schools of lawyers and philosophers appeared in Salerno, the city continued to be called the civitas Hippocratica (Hippocratic city). At the behest of the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, Frederick II (1212–1250), she was the only one in the country to have the right to confer the title of doctor; without a license from this school, it was forbidden to practice medicine. In 1213, the Salerno school was transformed into a university. Training in Salerno lasted five years, followed by compulsory medical practice for one year. From all over Europe, suffering healing and knowledge flowed to Salerno:

Everyone agrees: according to the law of Salerno - immortal glory. The whole world flows there to find healing. I believe that the teaching of the school of Salerno is true.

Arkhipiit (XII century.).

Translation by Yu. F. Schulz

The Salerno school had a great positive effect on the medicine of medieval Europe. It was the center from which ideas far from scholasticism spread (fig. 80). The best work of the Salerno Medical School in its entire thousand-year history was the short poem “The Salerno Health Code” (“Regimen sanitatis Saler-nitanum”). • Its author is Arnold de Villanova (Arnaldo de Villanova, 1235–1311), a renowned scholar, physician and chemist of the Middle Ages, later - Master of the University of Mont-Pelee. The poem is dedicated to dietetics and the prevention of disease. It also provides some information about the structure of the human body (for example, the number of bones, teeth and large blood vessels). Arnold described the four temperaments in humans in a colorful form. This is how he saw the sanguine:

Every sanguine person is always a merry fellow and a prankster of nature, Amenable to every rumor and listen tirelessly prepared. Bacchus and Venus - delight him, and food, and fun; With them he is full of joy, and his speech flows sweetly. He has a tendency to any sciences and is capable of. Whatever happens - but he does not easily burn with anger. Amorous; generous, cheerful, laughing, flushed, Loving songs, fleshy, truly brave and kind.

Translation by Yu. F. Schulz

The work of Arnold from Villanova, published for the first time in 1480, was translated into many European languages ​​and reprinted more than 300 times.

In the Middle Ages, associations (communities) of people of the same profession (merchants, artisans, etc.) were called universitas (lat. Set). By analogy with them, the corporations of teachers and students — universitas magistrorurn et sco-larium — came to be called that. So the term university appeared. The formation of universities in medieval Western Europe is closely connected with the growth of cities, the development of handicrafts and trade, the needs of economic life and culture.

In 1158 the status of a university was received by a law school in Bologna (Italy). Then the university status was assigned to schools in Oxford and Cambridge (Britain, 1209), Paris (France, 1215), Salamanca (Spain, 1218), Padua (Italy, 1222), Naples (Italy, 1224), Montpellier (France, 1289) , Lisbon (Portugal, 1290), Prague (Czech Republic, 1348), Krakow (Poland, 1364), Vienna (Austria, 1365), Heidelberg (Germany, 1386) (fig. 81), Cologne (Germany, 1388), Leipzig ( Germany, 1409) and others.

As a rule, medieval universities had four faculties: one preparatory and three major. The term faculty {lat. facul-tas - ability, skill, talent) was introduced in 1232 by Pope Gregory IX to designate various specialties at the University of Paris, open by church authorities, who thus sought to assert their influence on the training of scientists.

A preparatory (or artistic) faculty (from Lat. Artes — art), where seven liberal arts were taught (septem artes libera-les, see p. 144), was obligatory for all students. After mastering the trivium program (grammar, rhetoric, dialectics) and passing the appropriate exams, the student was awarded a bachelor of arts degree. After mastering the quad-rivium course (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music theory), the student received a Master of Arts degree and the right to continue studying at one of the main faculties: theological, medical or legal, after which the student was awarded a Master's degree faculty profile.

The word student comes from the Latin studere - learn. Students called all university students who; as a rule, they were mature people with a very high position in society: archdeacons, prelates, secular feudal lords. Duration of study and the age of students are usually not limited. Medieval universities were multinational educational institutions, where students are ob- united in the fellowship.

The number of students was small and within the same specialty it rarely exceeded the number 10. To be in charge of them, the elder of the dozens — the dean was elected from the students — from ten. At the head of the university was the rector magnificis-simus {lat. rector - ruler). Both of these posts were held by persons who had a high spiritual dignity. At church universities (for example, Paris), they were appointed and paid for by church authorities, and at universities founded by order of the king (for example, in Naples), by royal authority.

The term professor (lat. Professor - expert, publicly announced teacher) came from ancient Rome (the first professor of rhetoric in Rome was Quintuishan, from 68 AD). In medieval universities in Europe (from about the 15th to the 16th centuries), professors began to call professors — masters (lat. Magistri) and doctors (lag. Doctores).

As already noted, the language of medieval scholarship in Western Europe was Latin. The book in the Middle Ages was a great rarity. And it was very expensive. Her sheets were made of parchment - specially treated animal skin (its production began in the city of Pergam c. 180 BC and e.). Monk census takers worked on each book for several years. The most valuable and rare books were attached chains to the shelves or the department. Suffice it to say that in the XV century. there were only 12 books in the medical faculty of the University of Paris.

Teaching in medieval universities was dogmatic in nature. The works of Galen, Hippocrates, and Ibn Sina reviewed by the church were memorized. Practical training, as a rule, was not.

Students' perceptions about the structure of man were very superficial. The church forbade the "shedding of blood" and the opening of human corpses. (Note that in Alexandria in Hellenistic Egypt, as early as the 4th century BC, Herophilus and Erazistrat carried out systematic autopsies of the dead and executed criminals, which marked the beginning of the creation of descriptive anatomy.)

The first autopsies of the dead in Western Europe began to be made at the most progressive universities (Salerno and Montpellier) with the special permission of the monarchs only in the XIII-XIV centuries. So, in 1238 Frederick II allowed the medical faculty in Salerno to open one (!) Body in five years. In 1376, Louis, Duke of Anjou and ruler of Languedoc, ordered his court to hand over one corpse to the University of Montpellier.

The University of Montpellier was one of the most progressive in medieval Europe. Evidence of this is compulsory medical practice outside the city. So, in 1240, students were arrested only after working in a hospital for six months; in 1309, an 8-month practice outside Montpellier was required. There is also evidence that students of Montpellier already in the XIII century. attended the operations of their master teachers and studied "listening and seeing."

However, in the vast majority of medieval universities, surgery was not taught and was not included in the number of medical disciplines. She was engaged in bathhouse attendants, barbers' and surgeons who did not have a university education and were not recognized as doctors. The first changes in the attitude towards surgery were outlined after the distribution of Arabic manuscripts in Western Europe, as well as in connection with the crusades.

The first anatomy textbook in Western Europe was compiled in 1316 by the master of the University of Bologna Mondino de Luzzi (1275-1326) (Fig. 82). His work was based on the autopsies of only two corpses, which, due to the extreme rarity of this event, were carried out very carefully, within a few weeks. Much of this book is borrowed from the work of Galen "On the appointment of parts of the human body." According to the textbook, Mondino de Luzzi studied anatomy Andreas Bezaliy, who later became the founder of scientific anatomy.

One of the outstanding students of the universities in Bologna and Mont Pellère was Guy de Choliac (Guy de Chauliac, ca. 1300–1368). His compilation work "Collectorium artis chirurgicalis medicinae" ("Review of the surgical art of medicine", 1363) is a surgical encyclopedia of that time. Until the 17th century, it was the most common surgical textbook in Western Europe.

However, in general, medieval science and education in Western Europe were scholastic in nature. The cult of quotations, mechanical learning of scientific texts, disregard for practical experience prevailed:

Words disputes are underway,

From the words of the system are created,

Words should we trust,

In the words you can not change the iota ...

Goethe. "Faust"

The famous French caricaturist Honore Daumier (1808–1879) beautifully presented the furious argument of the scholastic doctors: while each of them, with his back to the patient, proves the correctness of his quotation, death takes the patient away (Fig. 83). The medieval scholastic medicine of Western Europe in many ways stood with its back to the patient. However, over time, the accumulation of knowledge led to the maturing of objective prerequisites for the development of a new experimental method in science.

Epidemics of Massive Diseases

Devastating epidemics and pandemics of infectious diseases have occurred in all periods of human history. The number of their victims reached, and sometimes even exceeded the losses during military operations. It is enough to recall the influenza pandemic during the First World War (“Spaniard”), affecting 500 million people, of whom about 20 million died. Yet the saddest page in the history of infectious diseases is the Middle Ages in Western Europe, where features of socio-economic political. and the cultural development of feudal states greatly contributed to the spread of massive infectious diseases.

Medieval cities in Western Europe arose in the 9th — 11th centuries, but water mains and drainage systems began to be built in them only a few centuries later (in Germany, for example, from the 15th century). For comparison, we note that the oldest known sanitary installations on the planet (wells, sewage systems, baths, swimming pools) were built in the middle of the 3rd millennium BC. e. in the valley of the river. Indus in the cities of Harappa, Mohenjo-Daro, Changhu-Daro, and others in the territory of modern Pakistan. In medieval Western Europe, citizens threw all the garbage and food waste right on the streets; narrow and curved, they were inaccessible to the rays of the sun. In rainy weather, the streets turned into impassable swamps, and on a hot day in the city it was difficult to breathe because of the acrid and fetid dust. It is clear that in such conditions, general diseases did not stop, and during plague, cholera and smallpox epidemics in the cities there was the highest mortality rate.

Crusades — the military colonization campaigns of Europeans in the East (1096–1270), which were allegedly carried out in the name of saving the “Holy Sepulcher”, also contributed to the wide spread of many contagious diseases. The main goal of the campaigns - the acquisition of new lands in the East - was not achieved. However, for Western Europe, they had significant cultural and economic consequences: new agricultural plants (buckwheat, rice, apricots, watermelons, etc.) appeared, sugar was used; some Eastern customs were borrowed (wearing a beard, washing hands before eating, hot baths). Following the example of the East, hospitals began to build secular-type hospitals in Western European countries - before that, hospitals in Western Europe, as well as in the Byzantine Empire, were established at monasteries: Hotel-Dieu (House of God) in Lyon (VI in.), Paris (VIII in ., Fig. 84) and others.

On the other hand, it was during the Crusades that the leprosy (or leprosy) was most widely spread. In the Middle Ages, it was considered to be an incurable and especially sticky battle. A person who admitted to a leper was expelled from society. He was publicly buried in the church, and then placed in a leper colony (orphanage of a leper), after which he was considered dead as in front of the church, hook and in front of society. He could not earn or inherit anything. Therefore, lepers were given the freedom to beg. They wore a special black dress, a special hat with a white ribbon (fig. 85) and a rattle, sounds

Fig. 85. The leper and the cripple at the gates of the city of Jerusalem. A miniature from the manuscript of Vincent de Beauvais “Historical mirror”. XV century.

The second was to warn others about the approach of a leper. When meeting with a passerby, he had to retreat to the side. The entrance to the city was allowed to lepers only on certain days. When shopping, they had to point them out with a special cane.

The idea of ​​isolating lepers from society arose in Western Europe as early as the 6th century, when the monks of the Order of Sts. Lazarus (in Italy) devoted themselves to the care of lepers. After the crusades, when leprosy spread in Europe, more than ever before in the history of mankind, the number of leprosariums on the continent reached 19,000. In France alone, the time of Louis VIII. (its territory was then half the size of modern), there were about 2 thousand leprosariums. In the Renaissance, due to the improvement of the sanitary life of cities, leprosy in Western Europe almost completely disappeared.

Another terrible general disease of the period of the classical Middle Ages was the plague (see Figure 5). In the history of the plague there are three colossal pandemics. The first is the "Justinian Plague", which, having left Egypt, devastated almost all the countries of the Mediterranean and lasted about 60 years. At the height of the epidemic in 542, thousands of people died daily in Constantinople alone. The second and most sinister in the history of Western Europe is the “black death” of the mid-14th century. The third is the pandemic of the plague, which began in 1892 in India (where more than 6 million people died) and echoed in the 20th century in the Azores, South America and other parts of the world where its funeral ringing did not stop.

The Black Death 1346–1348 It was brought to Europe through Genoa, Venice and Naples. Starting in Asia, it devastated Thrace, Macedonia, Syria, Egypt, Cairo, Sicily, the territory of modern states: Italy, Greece, France, England, Spain, Germany, Poland, Russia. The death of the diseased occurred a few hours after infection. In Caesarea, no one was left alive. About 60 thousand people died in Naples, 40 thousand people in Genoa (50% of the population), 100 thousand (70%) in Venice, nine-tenths of the population in London. The living did not have time to bury the dead (Fig. 86). Such national disasters, such as war or famine, "seem insignificant before the horrors of a rampant disease, which, according to moderate calculations, abducted about a third of the inhabitants throughout Europe," wrote the German medical historian G. Gezer. Total on the globe in the XIV century. more than 50 million people died from this disease.

The powerlessness of a person of that time in the face of mortal danger at the height of the epidemic is clearly expressed in the lines of A. Pushkin’s poem “Feast during the Plague”:

The queen is a terrible plague Now comes to us herself: And flatter the harvest of the rich; And to us through the window, day and night, He knocks with a grave spade ... What shall we do? and how to help?

Long before the development of scientifically based measures to combat infectious diseases in medieval Europe, people and goods were detained at border checkpoints for 40 days, from which the term quarantine originated (Italian. Quarantena from quaranta gironi — shreds of days). The first quarantines were introduced in the port cities of Italy in 1348 in the XV century. on the island of sv. Lazarus, near Venice, organized the first hospitals for sick people on ships during quarantine.

Medicine in medieval Europe developed in difficult and unfavorable conditions. Nevertheless, the objective laws of the development of society and the logic of scientific thinking inevitably contributed to the formation in its depths of the prerequisites for future medicine of the great Renaissance.