Medical education in late antiquity from Alexandria to Montpellier.

Abstract

The training of medical students reflects current medical trends and has grave repercussions on the future development of the medical art. This is as true today as it was in Antiquity. There was, however, one period and place at the crossroads of civilisations and cultures in which the educational trends were to have a particularly important influence on how medicine evolved. This was Alexandria in Late Antiquity. In a climate where medicine and philosophy were heavily intertwined, teachers used formal philosophical concepts in order to organise medical knowledge. Their educational techniques provided the tools with which Islamic authors during the medieval period such as Avicenna (Ibn Sinā, d. 1037) arranged their great medical encyclopaedias. These works in Latin translation later became the core curriculum in the nascent universities of Europe.