: Edmond Dupouy
: Medicine in the Middle Ages
: Books on Demand
: 9783751954600
: 1
: CHF 2.40
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: Allgemeines
: English
: 299
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In the fourth century of the Christian era Roman civilization expired; Western Europe was invaded by the barbarians; letters and science sought a last refuge at Alexandria; the Middle Age commenced. Greek medicine strove to survive the revolution in the city of the Ptolemies, and even produced a few celebrated physicians, i.e. , Alexander Ætius, Alexander Trallian, and Paulus Ægineta, but at the end of the seventh century the school of Alexandria also fell and disappeared in the clouds of a false philosophy, bequeathing all Hippocratic traditions to the Arabs, who advanced as conquerors to the Occident. The Arabian schools of Dschondisabur, Bagdad, Damascus, and Cordova were founded and became flourishing institutions of learning, thanks to a few Nestorian Greeks and Jews who were attracted to these centers of learning; such men as Aaron, Rhazes, Haly-Abas, Avicenna, Avenzoar, Averrhoes, Albucasis, and other writers, who continued the work left by the Greeks, leaving remarkable books on medicine and surgery. Unfortunately the ordinance of Islamism prevented these scientists from following anatomical work too closely, and consequently limited the progress they might otherwise have made in medicine.

THE PLAGUE


Several great epidemics of the Plague had already devastated the world; the plague of Athens in the fifth century, B. C.; the plague of the second century, in the reign of Marcus Aurelius; the plague of the third century, in the reign of Gallus; then came that most terrible epidemic of the sixth century, known by the name of the inguinal pestilence, which, after ravaging Constantinople spread into Liguria, then into France and Spain. It was in 542, according to Procopius, that an epidemic struck the world and consumed almost all the human species.
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“It attacked the entire earth,” says our author, “striking every race of people, sparing neither age nor sex; differences in habitation, diet, temperament or occupation of any nature did not stop its ravages; it prevailed in summer and in winter, in fact, at every season of the year.
“It commenced at the town of Pelusa in Egypt, from whence it spread by two routes, one through Alexandria and the rest of Egypt, the other through Palestine. After this it covered the whole world, progressing always by regular intervals of time and force. In the springtime of 543 it broke out in Constantinople and announced itself in the following manner:
“Many victims believed they saw the spirits of the departed rehabilitated in human form. It appeared as though these spirits appeared before the subject about to be attacked and struck him on certain portions of the body. These apparitions heralded the onset of the malady. It is but fair to say that the commencement of the disease was not the same in all cases. Some victims did not see the apparitions, but only dreamed of them, but all believed they heard a ghostly voice announcing their inscription on the list of those who were going to die. Some claim that the greater number of victims were not haunted either sleeping or waking by these ghosts and the mysterious voice that made sinister predictions.
“The fever at the onset of the attack came on suddenly,—some while sleeping, some while waking, some while at work. Their bodies exhibited no change of color, and the temperature was not very high. Some indications of fever were perceptible, but no signs of acute inflammation. In the morning and at night the fever was slight, and indicated nothing severe either to the patient or to the physician who counted the pulse. Most of those who presented such symptoms showed no indications of approaching dissolution; but the first day among some, the second day in others, and after several days in many cases, a bubo was observed on the lower portion of the abdomen, in the groin, or in the folds of the axilla, and sometimes back of the ears or on the thighs.
“The principal symptoms of the disease on its invasion were as I have pointed out; for the remainder, nothing can be precisely indicated of the variations of the type of the disease following temperament; these other symptoms were only such as were imprinted by the Supreme Being at his divine will.
“Some patients were plunged into a condition of profound drowsiness; others were victims to furious delirium. Those who were drowsy remained in a passive state, seeming to have lost all memory of the things of ordinary life. If they had any one to nurse them they took food when offered from time to time, and if they had no care soon died of inanition. The
delirious patients, deprived of sleep, were eternally pursued by their hallucinations; the