The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800Buck, Albert H. (Albert Henry)
History
The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800
Buck, Albert H. (Albert Henry)
Medicine -- History
(In Italy.) _Avicennae opera, arabice_, 1473.--_Guillelmi
de Saliceto cyrurgia_, 1475. (A French translation was
published at Lyons in 1492.)--_Celsi de medicina liber_,
etc., 1478.--_Guidonis de Cauliaco cyrurgia_, 1490. (A
French version was printed in Lyons in 1498.)
(In France.) _Christophori de Barzizus de febribum cognitione
et cura_, 1494.--_Bernard de Gourdon, traduction de son
“Lilium medicinae,”_ 1495.
When Constantinople fell into the hands of the Turks in 1453, many of
its Greek inhabitants, and particularly those belonging to the more
highly educated classes, fled to Western Europe in order to escape from
the tyranny of the invaders. Not a few of these refugees brought with
them to Italy and France copies of the works of the classical Greek
authors, and on this account, as well as because of their willingness
to give instruction in their native tongue, they met with a cordial
welcome wherever they took up their new abodes. Their arrival in
Italy happened at a most propitious time, for the interest in Greek
literature was at that period just beginning to develop among Italian
scholars. Previously, Greek had been an almost unknown tongue in Italy.
Petrarch, for example, is reported to have said in 1360 that he did
not know of ten educated men in that country who understood Greek; and
there is no evidence to show that the number of such men increased
between 1360 and the time when the refugees from Constantinople
arrived. Many of the works of greatest importance to physicians--such,
for example, as the writings of Hippocrates, of Galen, of Rufus
of Ephesus, of Oribasius, of Alexander of Tralles, and of several
other classical medical authors of antiquity--were accessible (in
the original) only to those who were familiar with the Greek tongue.
Consequently the arrival of these refugees from Constantinople
constituted a most important event in the history of European medicine.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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