Editing History of medicine (section)

=== Europe ===

The Renaissance brought an intense focus on scholarship to Christian Europe. A major effort to translate the Arabic and Greek scientific works into Latin emerged. Europeans gradually became experts not only in the ancient writings of the Romans and Greeks, but in the contemporary writings of Islamic scientists. During the later centuries of the Renaissance came an increase in experimental investigation, particularly in the field of dissection and body examination, thus advancing our knowledge of human anatomy.<ref>{{cite journal | vauthors = Siraisi NG | title = Medicine, 1450–1620, and the history of science | journal = Isis | volume = 103 | issue = 3 | pages = 491–514 | date = September 2012 | pmid = 23286188 | doi = 10.1086/667970 | s2cid = 6954963 }}</ref>[[Image:William Harvey ( 1578-1657) Venenbild.jpg|thumb|An experiment from [[William Harvey]]'s ''[[Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus|de Motu Cordis]]'', 1628]]

[[File:Leeuwenhoek Microscope.png|thumb|upright|Replica of [[Antonie van Leeuwenhoek]]'s [[microscope]] of the 1670s]]

==== Ideas ====

* '''Animalcules:''' In 1677 [[Antonie van Leeuwenhoek]] identified "animalcules", which we now know as microorganisms, within their paper "letter on the protozoa".<ref>{{cite journal | vauthors = Lane N | title = The unseen world: reflections on Leeuwenhoek (1677) 'Concerning little animals' | journal = Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences | volume = 370 | issue = 1666 | pages = 20140344 | date = April 2015 | pmid = 25750239 | pmc = 4360124 | doi = 10.1098/rstb.2014.0344 }}</ref>
* '''Blood circulation:''' In 1628 the English physician [[William Harvey]] made a ground-breaking discovery when he correctly described the [[circulatory system|circulation of the blood]] in his ''[[Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus]]''. Before this time the most useful manual in medicine used both by students and expert physicians was [[Dioscorides]]' ''[[De Materia Medica]]'', a [[pharmacopoeia]].

==== Inventions ====
* '''Microscopes:''' Bacteria and [[protist]]s were first observed with a [[microscope]] by [[Antonie van Leeuwenhoek]] in 1676, initiating the scientific field of [[microbiology]].<ref name="Brock" />

==== Institutions ====
At the [[University of Bologna]] the curriculum was revised and strengthened in 1560–1590.<ref>{{cite journal | vauthors = Lines DA | year = 2012 | title = Reorganizing the Curriculum: Teaching and Learning in the University of Bologna, c. 1560–1590 | journal = History of Universities | volume = 25 | issue = 2| pages = 1–59 }}</ref> The representative professor was [[Julius Caesar Aranzi]] (Arantius) (1530–1589). He became Professor of Anatomy and Surgery at the University of Bologna in 1556, where he established anatomy as a major branch of medicine for the first time. Aranzi combined anatomy with a description of pathological processes, based largely on his own research, Galen, and the work of his contemporary Italians. Aranzi discovered the 'Nodules of Aranzio' in the semilunar valves of the heart and wrote the first description of the superior levator palpebral and the coracobrachialis muscles. His books (in Latin) covered surgical techniques for many conditions, including [[hydrocephalus]], [[nasal polyp]], [[goitre]] and [[tumor|tumours]] to [[phimosis]], [[ascites]], [[hemorrhoid|haemorrhoids]], [[anorectal abscess|anal abscess]] and [[fistula]]e.<ref>{{cite journal | vauthors = Gurunluoglu R, Shafighi M, Gurunluoglu A, Cavdar S | title = Giulio Cesare Aranzio (Arantius) (1530–89) in the pageant of anatomy and surgery | journal = Journal of Medical Biography | volume = 19 | issue = 2 | pages = 63–69 | date = May 2011 | pmid = 21558532 | doi = 10.1258/jmb.2010.010049 | s2cid = 10833758 }}</ref>

==== People ====

===== Woman =====
Catholic women played large roles in health and healing in medieval and early modern Europe.<ref>{{cite journal | vauthors = Fissell ME | title = Introduction: women, health, and healing in early modern Europe | journal = Bulletin of the History of Medicine | volume = 82 | issue = 1 | pages = 1–17 | year = 2008 | pmid = 18344583 | doi = 10.1353/bhm.2008.0024 | s2cid = 37622681 }}</ref> A life as a nun was a prestigious role; wealthy families provided dowries for their daughters, and these funded the convents, while the nuns provided free nursing care for the poor.<ref name="pmid11618104">{{cite journal | vauthors = Green M | title = Women's Medical Practice and Health Care in Medieval Europe | journal = Signs | volume = 14 | issue = 2 | pages = 434–74 | date = 1989 | pmid = 11618104 | doi = 10.1086/494516 | s2cid = 38651601 }}</ref>

The Catholic elites provided hospital services because of their theology of salvation that good works were the route to heaven. The Protestant reformers rejected the notion that rich men could gain God's grace through good works—and thereby escape purgatory—by providing cash endowments to charitable institutions. They also rejected the Catholic idea that the poor patients earned grace and salvation through their suffering.<ref>{{cite book| veditors = Dixon CS, Freist D, Greengrass M |title=Living With Religious Diversity in Early-Modern Europe|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=l9fVJYNd61oC&pg=PA129|year= 2009|publisher=Ashgate |pages=128–130 |isbn=978-0-7546-6668-4 }}</ref> Protestants generally closed all the convents<ref>{{cite book | vauthors = Leonard AE | chapter = Female Religious Orders | veditors = Hsia RP |title=A companion to the Reformation world |date=2006 |publisher=Blackwell |location=Oxford |isbn=978-1-4051-7865-5 | pages = 237–254 }}</ref> and most of the hospitals, sending women home to become housewives, often against their will.<ref>{{cite book| vauthors = Cunningham A, Grell OP |title=Health Care and Poor Relief in Protestant Europe 1500–1700|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dd-44kXLh1QC&pg=PA130|year= 2002|publisher=Routledge|pages=130–33|isbn=978-0-203-43134-4}}</ref> On the other hand, local officials recognized the public value of hospitals, and some were continued in Protestant lands, but without monks or nuns and in the control of local governments.<ref>{{cite book| vauthors = Mäkinen V |title=Lutheran Reformation and the Law|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5Dkk1CDZ1UsC&pg=PA227|year=2006|publisher=Brill|pages=227–29|isbn=978-90-04-14904-5}}</ref>

In London, the crown allowed two hospitals to continue their charitable work, under nonreligious control of city officials.<ref>{{cite book| vauthors = Waddington K |title=Medical Education at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, 1123–1995|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Mi5cV5D0SkAC&pg=PA18 |year=2003 |publisher=Boydell & Brewer|page=18|isbn=978-0-85115-919-5 }}</ref> The convents were all shut down but Harkness finds that women—some of them former nuns—were part of a new system that delivered essential medical services to people outside their family. They were employed by parishes and hospitals, as well as by private families, and provided nursing care as well as some medical, pharmaceutical, and surgical services.<ref>{{cite journal | vauthors = Harkness DE | title = A view from the streets: women and medical work in Elizabethan London | journal = Bulletin of the History of Medicine | volume = 82 | issue = 1 | pages = 52–85 | year = 2008 | pmid = 18344585 | doi = 10.1353/bhm.2008.0001 | s2cid = 5695475 }}</ref>

Meanwhile, in Catholic lands such as France, rich families continued to fund convents and monasteries, and enrolled their daughters as nuns who provided free health services to the poor. Nursing was a religious role for the nurse, and there was little call for science.<ref name="pmid21724643">{{cite journal | vauthors = McHugh T | title = Expanding women's rural medical work in early modern Brittany: the Daughters of the Holy Spirit | journal = Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences | volume = 67 | issue = 3 | pages = 428–456 | date = July 2012 |id={{Project MUSE|480067}} | pmid = 21724643 | pmc = 3376001 | doi = 10.1093/jhmas/jrr032 }}</ref>