The medicine of the Middle Ages was characterized by complex medical prescriptions. Pharmacy was directly related to alchemy. The number of parts in one prescription often reached several dozens. A special place among medicines was occupied by antidotes: the so-called teriak, which included 70 or more components (the main component was snake meat), as well as mitridate (opal). Theriac was also considered a remedy for all internal diseases, including “pestilence” fevers. These remedies were very expensive. In some cities, especially famous for their teriacs and mithridates and selling them to other countries (Venice, Nuremberg), the production of these remedies was made in public, with great solemnity, in the presence of the authorities and invited persons.
Autopsies of corpses at the time of pest plagues were performed as early as the 6th century A.D., but they contributed little to the development of medicine. The first autopsies, traces of which have come down to us, were carried out since the XIII century. In 1231 Emperor Frederick II allowed a human corpse to be dissected once every 5 years, but in 1300 the pope imposed severe punishment on anyone who dared to dismember a human corpse or boil it down to make a skeleton. From time to time some universities were allowed to perform autopsies on corpses. The faculty of medicine at Montpellier in 1376 received permission to dissect the corpses of the executed; at Venice in 1368 one dissection a year was permitted.’In Prague regular dissections did not begin until 1400, 52 years after the opening of the university. The University of Vienna received such permission from 1403, but in 94 years (from 1404 to 1498) only 9 autopsies were performed there. At Greifswald University the first human corpse was dissected 200 years after the university was established. The autopsy was usually performed by a barber. During the autopsy, a theoretical professor read aloud in Latin the anatomical work of Galen. The autopsy was usually limited to the abdominal and thoracic cavities.
In 1316. Mondino de Lucci compiled a textbook on anatomy, attempting to replace that part of the first book of Ibn Sina’s Canon of the Medical Science which deals with anatomy. Mondino himself had the opportunity to dissect only two corpses, and his textbook was a compilation. Mondino drew his basic anatomical knowledge from a poor, error-filled translation of an Arabic compilation of Galen’s work. For more than two centuries, Mondino’s book remained a textbook of anatomy.
Only in Italy in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries did the dissection of human corpses for the purpose of teaching anatomy become more frequent.
Among the medieval universities of Western Europe, Salerno and Padua played a progressive role and were less influenced by scholasticism
Already in antiquity, the Roman colony of Salerno, lying south of Naples, was known for its curative climate. The influx of sick people naturally led to a concentration of physicians here. In the beginning of the VI century, meetings were held in Salerno to read the works of Hippocrates; later, in the IX century, a medical school was created in Salerno, the prototype of the university that emerged in the XI century. The teachers at the Salerno School were of different nationalities. The teaching consisted of reading the works of Greek and Roman, and later Arab writers and interpreting what they read. Widely known in Western Europe in the Middle Ages was the Salerno Sanitary Regulations, a popular collection of rules for individual hygiene, which was compiled in the 11th century in verse form in Latin and repeatedly published.
Distinct from most medieval universities, the University of Padua in the dominions of Venice came into prominence later, towards the end of the Middle Ages, during the Renaissance. It was founded in the 13th century by scholars fleeing papal regions and Spain from persecution by Catholic ecclesiastical reaction. In the 16th century it became a center of advanced medicine.
The Middle Ages in the West and in the East are characterized by a new phenomenon, not known to the ancient world on such a scale – major epidemics. Among the numerous epidemics of the Middle Ages the “black death” in the middle of the XIV century – plague with the accession of other diseases – left a particularly grave memory. Historians, on the basis of data from chronicles, church records of burials, city chronicles and other documents, claim that many major cities were devastated. These devastating epidemics were accompanied by devastation in all areas of economic and social life. A number of conditions contributed to the development of epidemics: the emergence and growth of cities characterized by crowding, cramped and dirty conditions, the mass movement of huge numbers of people – the so-called great migration of peoples from East to West, later a great military colonization movement in the opposite direction – the so-called Crusades (eight campaigns in the period from 1096 to ‘291).