Avicenna's suggested improvements in medicine were mostly ignored in Europe during the Middle Ages (10th–14th centuries). Indeed, medieval medicine was noted more for superstition than for experimentation. Although Roger Bacon (1220–1292) and other philosophers of the era tried to provide a rational foundation for scientific inquiry, their efforts were largely failures. Nevertheless, faculties of medicine were first established during the 13th century at universities in Bologna, Paris, Oxford, and Montpelier, where their formation was encouraged by Popes such as Innocent III and Gregory IX.
William of Salicet Discredits the Suppurative Process
Some medical practitioners of the day were surprisingly modern in their approach to human experimentation. The Italian surgeon William of Salicet (1210–1277) made several observational studies on wounds and determined that open lesions healed better when left to nature (‘primary union’) than by artificially inducing pus to form (‘suppurative process’). Sadly, other physicians of the era ignored these observations and continued to pour boiling oil into open sores as a means to induce suppuration, kill infection, and remove dangerous poisons.
Sometimes, however, scientific inquiry is encouraged by favorable accidents. After one battle, a surgeon discovered that he did not have enough oil to treat all his patients, and so reluctantly cleaned some of the soldiers’ wounds with water. When he returned the next morning, he expected to find the water-treated patients in critical condition. Instead, he was shocked to discover that they were in better shape than those patients cared for with hot oil.
Despite this refutation of the ‘suppurative process,’ physicians continued to experiment with boiling oil and other heating agents for several more centuries. It was not until Joseph Lister (1827–1912) promoted the idea of disinfecting wounds by exposing them to chemical solutions such as carbolic acid (i.e., phenol) that this cruel treatment stopped.
The Age of Reason and the Galenic Tradition
The Age of Reason (17th century) witnessed some glimmerings of scientific discourse in unexpected places. In 1663, the indefatigable English diarist, Samuel Pepys, recorded a dispute he witnessed between a doctor adhering to the older Galenic tradition of medicine and pharmacists who believed that chemical principles could be applied to drug preparation:
“. . . at noon to the Coffee-house, and there heard a long and most passionate discourse between two doctors of physique, of which one was Dr. Allen, whom I knew at Cambridge, and a couple of apothecarys; these maintaining chymistry against them Galenicall physique; and the truth is, one of the apothecarys whom they charged most, did speak very prettily, that is, his language and sense good, though perhaps he might not be so knowing a physician as to offer to contest with them. At last they came to some cooler terms, and broke up.”
In the Galenic tradition, the body was composed of four ‘humors’ (black bile, yellow bile, blood, and phlegm), and disease was caused by an imbalance among them. Typical Galenic treatments often involved a combination of blood-letting, purging, and blistering that were designed to correct imbalance by ridding the body of harmful entities. Unfortunately, ridding the body of imbalance also left many a patient worse off than before.
Robert Boyle Separates Alchemy From Chemistry
Although a few herbal medicines were known to physicians, drug preparation was erratic and governed by profit rather than by science. For the most part, new compounds were discovered only as byproducts of the alchemist’s search for a way to convert inexpensive metals into gold.
It was not until the publication of Robert Boyle’s 1661 work, The Sceptical Chymist, that alchemy was separated from chemistry and a more systematic approach to creating chemical compounds developed. As Boyle himself declared, “we shall much undervalue Chymistry, if we imagine, that it cannot teach us things farr more useful, not only to Physick but to Philosophy, than those that are hitherto known to vulgar [alchemists].”
Chemical experimentation allowed physicians to make new medicines, but not all new treatment therapies proved beneficial to patients. Sometimes patients were forced to experiment, as the Age of Enlightenment would show in the search for a cure to smallpox.
References
Boyle R. 1661. The Sceptical Chymist or Chymico-Physical Doubts & Paradoxes Touching the Spagyrist’s Principles Commonly call’d Hypostatical; As they are wont to be Propos’d and Defended by the Generality of Alchymists. Whereunto is præmis’d Part of another Discourse relating to the same Subject. London: Cadwell & Crooke.
Pepys S. 1893. Tuesday 3 November, 1663. In: H.B. Wheatley F.S.A (Ed.), The Diary of Samuel Pepys M.A. F.R.S., Clerk of the Acts and Secretary to the Admiralty. London: George Bell & Sons.
Walsh JJ. 1907. Chapter V. Post-graduate work at the universities. The Thirteenth: Greatest of Centuries. New York: Catholic Summer School Press.
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