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Social History of Medicine Advance Access published online on November 3, 2009
Social History of Medicine, doi:10.1093/shm/hkp052
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© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for the Social History of Medicine.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

What's Wrong with Early Medieval Medicine?

Peregrine Horden

Department of History, Royal Holloway University of London, Egham, TW20 0EX, UK. Email: p.horden{at}rhul.ac.uk


  Abstract

The medical writings of early medieval western Europe c. 700 – c. 1000 have often been derided for their disorganised appearance, poor Latin, nebulous conceptual framework, admixtures of magic and folklore, and general lack of those positive features that historians attribute to ancient or later medieval medicine. This paper attempts to rescue the period from its negative image. It examines a number of superficially bizarre writings so as to place them in an intellectual and sociological context, and to suggest that the presumed contrast between them and their ancient and later medieval counterparts has been wrongly drawn.

Keywords: early Middle Ages; manuscripts; prognosis; materia medica


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