Читать книгу The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity - Roy Porter - Страница 34

BARBARIAN INVASIONS, the collapse of the western Roman empire, and the rise of warrior fiefdoms spelt catastrophe for civilization and its amenities – including the teaching and practice of learned medicine. City life collapsed in Europe into a landscape dominated by castles and cathedrals, with literate men and women confined to monastic cloisters. The medical thread was, however, unbroken, even if it frayed and threatened to snap. Through what are known as the Dark Ages medical manuscripts were at least preserved, copied and studied within the sanctuaries provided by abbeys and cathedral schools. The medicine they kept alive was, however, but a shadow of its brilliance in Galen’s day: a basic survival kit when book-learning itself was under threat.

The revival of formal medicine took place centuries later in the backward West than in the Islamic world – not until around 1100, emerging first in Salerno in southern Italy, thirty miles south of Naples and seventy miles from the glorious Benedictine monastery of Monte Cassino. And it had to be imported and replanted.