{"id":7542,"date":"2023-11-14T00:01:00","date_gmt":"2023-11-14T00:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/?p=7542"},"modified":"2023-11-14T03:09:35","modified_gmt":"2023-11-14T03:09:35","slug":"medieval-monkish-medicine-scientific-before-science-was-a-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/medieval-monkish-medicine-scientific-before-science-was-a-thing\/","title":{"rendered":"Medieval Monkish Medicine: Scientific Before Science was a Thing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"From<\/a>
15th-century medical manuscript, showing colors of urine with their associated ailments.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Looks like word is getting around, among historians at any rate, that the “Dark Ages” weren’t an abyss of superstition and ignorance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I see that as good news, and recommend reading the rest of Meg Leja’s Smithsonian Magazine article.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’ve highlighted parts of this excerpt, and talked (briefly, for me) about the medical angle of post-Roman Europe under Respecting Ancient Authorities: Above and Beyond the Call of Reason<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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“Modern Medicine Traces Its Scientific Roots to the Middle Ages<\/a>“
“Contrary to popular belief, early medieval doctors relied on rational deduction to understand and treat disease”
Meg Leja, The Conversation, Smithsonian Magazine
(November 10, 2023)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“…The idea of ‘Dark Age medicine’ is a useful narrative when it comes to ingrained beliefs about medical progress. It is a period that stands as the abyss from which more enlightened thinkers freed themselves. But recent research pushes back against the depiction of the early Middle Ages as ignorant and superstitious, arguing that there is a consistency and rationality to healing practices at that time.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“As a historian of this period, which spanned roughly from 400 to 1000, I make sense of how the societies that produced vulture medicine envisioned it as one component of a much broader array of legitimate therapies. In order to recognize ‘progress’ in Dark Age medicine, it is essential to see the broader patterns that led a medieval scribe to copy out a set of recipes using vulture organs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The major innovation of the age was the articulation of a medical philosophy that validated manipulating the physical world because it was a religious duty to rationally guard the body’s health.<\/strong>…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“…Most intellectual activities in Northern Europe were taking place within monasteries, where the majority of surviving medical writings from that time were written, read, discussed and likely put into practice.<\/strong> Scholars have assumed that religious superstition overwhelmed scientific impulse and the church dictated what constituted legitimate healing\u2014namely, prayer, anointing with holy oil, miracles of the saints and penance for sin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“But ‘human medicine’\u2014a term affirming human agency in discovering remedies from nature\u2014emerged in the Dark Ages. It appears again and again in a text that monks at the monastery in Lorsch, Germany, wrote around the year 800 to defend ancient Greek medical learning. It insists that Hippocratic medicine was mandated by God and that doctors act as divine agents in promoting health. I argue in my recent book, ‘Embodying the Soul: Medicine and Religion in Carolingian Europe’, that a major innovation of that time was the creative synthesis of Christian orthodoxy with a growing belief in the importance of preventing disease.<\/strong>…”
[emphasis mine]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The “recent research” Meg Leja mentions is:<\/p>\n\n\n\n