1000 – 1799
Emerging Classical and Folk Medical Traditions:
Rationalist and Empirical Physicians and the Therapeutic Relationship

11th Century

1000 CE

Jews, Arabs and Persians practice as court physicians of German nobility.

1001

 
Ibn Buṭlṭān (Arabic: بطالن ابن ;Yawānīs al-Mukhtār ibn al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAbdūn al-Baghdādī; Elluchasem Elimithar). (d. 1066±). Arab Nestorian Christian physician born in Baghdad, author of Da’ wat al-atibba (The Banquet of Physicians) (1054) and other texts that would later be translated in Europe as Tacuini Sanitatis (Tables of Health), an encyclopedia of health promotion and disease treatment; an innovative work in use of tabular format.

1023

[PM]Practice Models and Care Delivery [PL][MC]}
Roman Catholic Pope Innocent III organizes the hospital of Santo Spirito in Rome, inspiring the formation of similar facilities throughout Europe.

1025

Al-Qanun fi al-Tibb (Arabic: الطب في القانون(, translated as The Canon of Medicine. Written by Persian physician and polymath Ibn Sina (Arabic; Latin: Avicenna) Widely influential medical text in Islamic Unani medicine and Medieval European medicine. Standard medical text until 18th c. in Europe; used in Unani medicine today; influential to principles of natural therapeutics.

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge [PM][DP]

1071-1078

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge
Simeon Seth or Symeon Seth, a Jewish Byzantine, translates Arabic medical works into Greek.

1084

[PM]Practice Models and Care Delivery [MC]
First documented hospital in England at Canterbury.

1085±

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge [PM]
Pantegni. A significant encyclopedia of medicine, written by 10th c. Persian ‘Ali ibn al-‘Abbas al-Majusi; translated into Latin by North African merchant-turned-monk, Constantine the African; scholars have concluded that this manuscript was produced at Abbey of Monte Cassino under Constantine the African’s direct supervision; Constantine died 1098-99±. Oldest known copy in Europe, 1085; part of influx of Arabic and ancient Greek sources; influenced epochal shift in the learnèd medicine of Europe.

1098

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge [PM][DP]
Hildegard von Bingen (d. 1179) Benedictine (Roman Catholic) nun, abbess, infirmarian, theologian, mystic, composer, visionary; practiced humoral medicine as an infirmarian, often providing care at the level of a physician; considered a great teacher in her time; emerged as inspirational figure in late 20th century. Wrote on herbs, medicine and healing: three theology books, two medical texts (Causes and Cures; Physica); 70 pieces of music, among other works. Articulated theory of viriditas, ’the greening force,’ and model of physician as gardener, while advancing humoral and elemental theory.

12th Century

1100

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge [PM]
Trota of Salerno. Studied medicine in Salerno; wrote at least one book in Trotula Major, a collection on women’s health.

1123

[PM]Practice Models and Care Delivery [MC]
Rahere, court jester, founds St. Bartholomew’s Hospital with Augustine nuns originally caring for patients, which also included those diagnosed with “mental” diseases.

1125

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge [PM]
First University Chair in astrology at Bologna.

1158

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge [PM]
Abraham Ibn Ezra, a Jewish medical astrologer from Toledo, lectures in England during the reign of King Henry VIII.

1126

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge [PM]
Ibn Rushd (Arabic: ابن رشد ;romanized: Abū l-Walīd Muḥaḥ mmad Ibn ʾAḥmḥ ad Ibn Rušd; usually Latinized as Averroes) (d. 1198). Andalusian jurist, physician, philosopher and polymath. Authored more than 100 books and treatises and known for his influential commentaries on Aristotle, many of which were translated into Latin and Hebrew. After his death, the Averroism movement grew up around his teachings, and his work greatly influenced the subsequent development of Scholasticism in Western Europe. Translated into Latin and known as the Colliget, his Al-Kulliyat fi al-Tibb, became one of the main medical textbooks for physicians in the Jewish, Christian and Muslim worlds for centuries.

1135

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge [PM][DP]
Moses Maimonides (d. 1204). Jewish rabbinical scholar, philosopher and physician; emphasizes healthy living in alignment with Jewish religious laws; studied and practiced humoral medicine.

1197

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge
Ibn al-Bayṭāṭ r (Arabic: البيطار ابن; Diyāʾ al-Dīn Abū Muḥaḥ mmad ʿAbd Allāh ibn Aḥmḥ ad al-Mālaqī (d. 1248) an Andalusian Arab physician, botanist, pharmacist and natural philosopher, writes on botany and pharmacy, travels throughout North Africa and Middle East (1219-1227) collecting and documenting plants and systematically compiling contributions of Islamic physicians from the Middle Ages, adding 300-400 medicinal substances to the one thousand previously known since antiquity; also studies animal anatomy and advances veterinary medicine.

13th Century

1210

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge [AI]
Taddeo Alderotti (d. 1295) founder and celebrated professor of medicine at University of Bologna, develops fractional distillation; a key figure in Scholastic medicine, Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) describes Alderotti in his Divine Comedy as a “Hippocratist,” or follower of Hippocrates.

1200 ±

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge [PM]
Abu’l-ʿAbbās al-Nabātī (Arabic: النباتي العباس أبو ;Ahmad bin Muhammad bin Mufarraj bin Ani al-Khalil). Andalusian botanist, pharmacist and theologian, collects and catalogues plants in and around Spain, with student Ibn al-Bayṭāṭr, and implements early scientific method, combining empirical and experimental approaches in testing, describing and identifying many plants of the regional materia medica, including separating unverified reports from those supported by observation and testing.

1275

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge [PM]
Joannes Zacharias Actuarius (Greek: Ἰωάννης Ζαχαρίου Ἀκτουάριος) (d. 1330). Byzantine physician and pharmacologist in Constantinople compiles Epitome of Medicine, a handbook for Philiatroi (‘amateur physicians‘), the last great compendium of Byzantine medicine drawing from Galen’s On the Composition of Drugs According to Places and also the Greek translation (Ephodia tou Apodēmountos) of the famous medieval Arabic medical text by Ibn al-Jazzār Zād al-Musāfir wa-Qūt al-ḤāḤ ḍiḍr (Latin: Viaticum). His influential treatise on urine Περὶ οὔρων (Lat. De Urinis; On Urines)  revives the genre of case histories for the first time in the Greek-speaking world since Galen, In On the Activities and Affections of the Psychic Pneuma and the Corresponding Regimen, he discusses the relationship between the quality of pneuma and one’s daily regimen, including diet, physical exercise, bathing, and sleep, thus providing a systematic introduction of the qualitative change in pneuma as an object of treatment. He also wrote Περὶ ἐνεργειῶν καὶ παθῶν τοῦ ψυχικοὺ πνεύματος καὶ τῆς κατ’ αὐτὸ διαίτης (Lat. De Actionibus et Affectibus Spiritus Animalis, ejusque Nutritione) and Θεραπευτικὴ μέθοδος (Lat. De Methodo Medendi; The Therapeutical Method, 1554). Many of Actuarius’ works, particularly on uroscopy and human physiology were translated into Latin and published in the 16th century.

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge
Mondino de Luzzi “Mundinus” (d. 1326) performs first systematic human dissections since Herophilus of Chalcedon and Erasistratus of Ceos, 1500 years prior.

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge [PM]
William of Saliceto publishes Chirurgia, a pioneering record of human dissection.

1284

[PM]Practice Models and Care Delivery [MC]
Mansur hospital opens in Cairo.

14th Century

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge [PM]
“Charts of Zodiacal Man appear more widely in Europe late in this century, and are standard inclusion in physician’s volvelles. However, first depiction could have occurred as early as the 10th-12th centuries (sources vary).” (Hill, Judith. 2020. Timeline of Astrological Medicine.) Yale Library: The Zodiac Man: https://onlineexhibits.library.yale.edu/s/medicalastrology/page/astrological-anatomy

1326

[AI]Schools and Educational Councils [PL][MC]
Sara de Sancto Aegidio only known example of a Jewish woman teaching medicine is recorded in Marseilles records.

Late Middle Ages

[PL]Governmental Policy and Legislation [AI][PM]
University Chairs of Astrology are established at Padua, Oxford, Paris, Vienna, Bologna, Florence and other cities. Physicians in many schools were required to pass their astrological exams, requisite to obtaining their physician’s license; a practice that continues until 1666. (Hill, Judith. 2020. Timeline of Astrological Medicine.)

15th Century

1421

[PL]Governmental Policy and Legislation [AI][PM][MC]
Roman Church edict prohibits women from practicing medicine in Europe. Many European jurisdictions also prohibit practice of medicine by non-university graduates.

1450-1750±

[PL]Governmental Policy and Legislation [HK][PM][MC]
The “Burning Times”. Between 40,000 and 100,000 people executed for witchcraft in Europe, according to conservative scholarly estimates. Some estimate that up to several million people were executed over a 400-year period but such claims are unsubstantiated. Herbalists, cunning folk, midwives, folk medicine practitioners and indigenous pre-Christian ceremonialists were predominant among those persecuted, with women constituting an estimated 60-85% of those executed. Even so, many of those put on trial were released after being found not guilty as charged or given minimal punishment. The extended campaign to eradicate pre-Christian and syncretic elements of European rural culture severely restricted the role of women and animistic practitioners in medical practice, informal care delivery, and cultural/religious leadership throughout Europe. The “Burning Times” were part of a broader cultural shift characterized by concentration of land ownership by elites, disruption of traditional relationships of people with their ancestors and ancestral lands, and systematic destruction of the cultural practices of rural society, particularly the place of women in roles of authority and power. Over time these therapeutic traditions gradually re-emerge throughout Europe as cunning folk, hedgewitches, pellars, czarownica, curanderos, and other local names under a “dual belief” mixture of Christian and indigenous practices well into the 19th century.

1486

[PL]Governmental Policy and Legislation [PM][LR][MC]
Malleus Mallificarum. (The Hammer of Witches, or Hexenhammer in German). Influential early book published as manual for identifying and persecuting accused “witches.” Provided criteria for suspicion, procedures for confessions and trials, usually involving torture, and death penalties, by burning or drowning, with hanging practiced in England.

1493

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge [PM][DP]
Paracelsus (Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim) (d. 1541). Born in Switzerland; brought folk practices into physician traditions; derided dogma; taught in vernacular, instead of Latin. Practitioner and investigator of natural philosophy, hermetic sciences, and alchemy; considered primal figure in emerging fields of chemistry, toxicology, pharmacy and early modern medicine of all schools; established concept of archeus. Root influence of homeopathy, phytotherapy, spagyric preparations and other methods of practice and schools of philosophy.

Author of numerous books on philosophy, medicine, alchemy, chemistry and pharmacy, including Die Kleine Chirurgia, a pioneering manual of surgery, and numerous writings on medical education, clinical techniques, astrological causation, planet-metal correlations, and methods for creating astrological talismans for the treatment of disease.

Paracelsus taught of the dynamic interrelationship of spiritual and material, divine and natural, the whole and the parts. “Ofttimes Nature herself produces her own balsam by which the wound heals, for which it is only necessary to keep it sweet and clean.” (Editorial. The Irish Journal of Medical Science. 1926:6(12), 665-670.)

In Astrale Opus Paramirum (1530/31) Paracelsus advocates the untraditional theory of external origin of disease and declares that health and disease are rooted in one of five Entia:
• Ens Astrale/Astrorum: the influence of the stars and planets (astrology and inner source).
• Ens Venini: the influence of nourishment and toxins.
• Ens Naturale: the nature, functions and constitution of physical body.
• Ens Spirituale: the influence of spiritual beings.
• Ens Dei: power of the divine to bring health out of disease.

The four pillars of Paracelsus’ medical theory from Opus Paragranum (1529/30):
• Philosophia (Philosophy): Knowledge of nature, particularly earth and water
• Astronomia (Astronomy): Knowledge of the cosmos and the earth, particularly air and fire.
• Alchimia (Alchemy): The whole cosmos, as demonstrated through all four elements.
• Proprietas: The virtue of the physician (enables the other three pillars).

“The physician should be an Alchemist; that is to say, he should understand the Chemistry of Life. Medicine is not merely a science, but an art. It does not consist merely in compounding pills and plasters and drugs, but it deals with the processes of Life, which must be understood before they can be guided.”

1496

[LR]Licensure and Regulation [PL]
Jörg Radendorfer, a lîbarzet from Vienna, received rights in Frankfurt that were otherwise restricted to academic physicians; these, however, were withdrawn in 1499 after protests of doctors and pharmacists, and the death of a patient. Radendorfer later worked in Nuremberg from 1500 to ca. 1503.

1497

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge [PM][DP]
Jean François Fernel (Latin, Ioannes Fernelius) (d. 1558). French physician who reformed, systematized, and reorganized Renaissance medicine, integrating major influence of Avicenna; introduced the term “physiology” to describe the study of the body’s function, and applied a Christian interpretation of Plato to Galen’s writings in De abditis rerum causis (On the Hidden Causes of Things), as part of De naturali parte medicinae libri septem (The Natural Part of Medicine), published in Paris in 1542; the title was later changed to Physiologia (Physiology) in 1567. Other writings include: De vacuandi ratione (1545), De abditis rerum causis (1548), and Universa Medicina, composed of three parts, the Physiologia, the Pathologia, and the Therapeutice.

Fernel’s work promoted a Humanist interpretation of ancient authors such as Plato, Aristotle and Galen and introduced a model of “mixture and temperament (that) stimulated a discontinuous interpretation of elements as contiguous particles.” (Moreau, E. (2018). “Elements, Mixture and Temperament: The Body’s Composition in Renaissance Physiology,” in, Beneduce C. and Vincenti D. (eds.) (2018) Oeconomia corporis: The Body’s Normal and Pathological Constitution at the Intersection of Philosophy and Medicine.)

1498

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge [PM][DP]
Hieronymus Bock (d. 1554). Along with students, Jacobus Theodorus Tabernaemontanus and Leonhart Fuchs, contributed influential works on herbal medicine (Das Kreütter Buch, Neuw Kreuterbuch, De Historia Stirpium commentarii insignes) highlighting use of herbs within a framework of natural laws. Described plants using qualities (i.e., warm, cold, dry, wet), directly linking to the four elements, temperaments and humors. This humoral method is still applied in traditional European phytotherapy.

16th Century

1500

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge [PM]
Thomas Linacre (1460-1524), physician and humanist scholar, was “among those who brought medicine into the right path by propagating the real conceptions and methods of Hippocrates and of the ancient Greek physicians”. (Cawadias, A.P. (1931). “Neo-Hippocratism.” British Medical Journal. 2(3696):869-869.)

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge [PM]
Leechdoms, Wortcunning, and Starcraft of Early England. [Thomas] Oswald Cockayne.  v. 1-3 (1864-1866). A Collection of Documents, For the Most Part Never Before Printed, Illustrating the History of Science in This Country Before the Norman Conquest. Collected and Edited by the Rev. Oswald Cockayne, M.A., Cantab. *  THE CHRONICLES AND MEMORIALS OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. Published By The Authority Of Her Majesty’s’ Treasury, Under The Direction of The Master of The Rolls . On the 26th of January 1857, the Master of the Rolls submitted to the Treasury a proposal for the publication of materiale for the History of this Country from the Invasion of the Romans to the Reign of Henry VIII.

1509

[LR]Licensure and Regulation [PA][PL][MC]
First attempts to restrict the right to practice medicine to licensed and institutionally approved physicians.

1518

[PA]Professional Associations [AI][PL][MC]
College of Physicians founded in England, by John Caius (Ioannes Caiusand); receives royal charter as a professional body of doctors of general medicine and its subspecialties; later known as Royal College of Physicians of London. Caius (1510-1573) was also second founder of the present Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge [PM][GH]
Li Shizhen (d. 1593), Ming Dynasty physician, acupuncturist, herbalist and scholar, authors the landmark Běncǎo Gāngmù (Chinese: 本草纲目; Compendium of Materia Medica, Arranged according to Drug Descriptions and Technical Aspects, 1596), an encyclopedic work of materia medica and natural history, influential in its systematic organization and corrections of errors from previous texts, as well as eleven other books, including Binhu Maixue (瀕湖脈學; A Study of the Pulse) and Qijing Bamai Kao (奇經八脈考; An Examination of the Eight Extra Meridians).

1519

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge [DP]
Andreas Vesalius (d. 1564) [Flemish: Andries Van Wesel]. Flemish anatomist, artist, physician, and author of De humani corporis fabrica libri septem (On the Fabric of the Human Body), a formative text in the shift from Galenic views of the body to the modern construct of human anatomy.

1521

[LR]Licensure and Regulation [PM][PA][PL][MC]
King Henry VIII of England grants the Herbalist Charter, protecting herbal practice from attacks by physicians. Legal precedent in colonial America and the Commonwealth.

1522±

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge
Jacobus Theodorus Tabernaemontanus (Jakob Dietrich) (d. 1590) physician and herbalist. Student of two key pioneers of Renaissance botany, Otto Brunfels and, later, Hieronymus Bock; pioneer of German botany, published the illustrated Neuw Kreuterbuch (Frankfurt, 1588) which was reprinted in Germany throughout the 17th century and provided unacknowledged material for John Gerard’s later and better-known Herball (London, 1597).

1523

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge [PM][DP]
Galen’s writings translated by Thomas Linacre for physicians, London. An abridged version available in English, in Certaine Works of Galens … with an Epitome … of Natural Faculties, trans. Thomas Gale, London, 1586, first publ. 1566.

1531

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge
Tacuini Sanitatis, (Tables of Health), published in Latin, originally written by ibn Butlan, based on manuscript copies circulating during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, providing counsel on health, hygiene, plants and diet based on six principles: food and drink; air and climate; activity and rest; sleep and wakefulness, the secretion and excretion of humors; and states of mind, Illness considered the outcome of an imbalance of these factors while a life lived in harmony with nature was the cure of illness. The text is supplemented in the first German translation appeared in Strassbourg (1523) by the work of a second Arab physician, Ibn Gazla, dedicated to the diagnosis and treatment of diseases, accidents and other ailments.

1533

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge
Hieronymus Fabricius (Girolamo Fabrici d’Acquapendente) (d. 1619) pioneers many anatomical descriptions and authors Operationes chirurgicae (Surgery; posthum. 1623), primarily derived, with attribution, from Celsus, Paul of Aegina, and Abulcasis. Transforms the teaching of anatomy with the first permanent theater for public anatomical dissections in Padua, 1594.

1542

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge [PM][DP]
Jean Fernel, a leading natural philosopher, publishes On the Hidden Causes of Things, introduced an innovative theory of disease, which focused on life processes, especially generation, and contagious and pestilential diseases, integrating Platonic, Stoic and other worldviews within the parameters of Aristotelian and Galenic philosophy.

1545

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge [PM][HK]
John Gerard (d. 1612). Completes Dr. Priest’s largely finished translation of Rembert Dodoens’ herbal text, The Pemptades, combining content with as-yet-unpublished material of Dutch herbalist and physician, Matthias de l’Obel, and unacknowledged content from Tabernaemontanus’ Neuw Kreuterbuch (1588) to produce Gerard’s Herball or The Generall Historie of Plantes (1597).

1546

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge [PM]
Girolamo Fracastoro (Latin Hieronymus Fracastorius, (1478-1553), an Italian physician, poet, scholar and proponent of philosophy of atomism, outlines his concept of epidemic diseases in De contagione et contagiosis morbis (On Contagion and Contagious Diseases); proposes that each is caused by a different type of rapidly multiplying minute body and that these bodies are transferred from the infector to the infected. Widely known for Syphilis sive morbus Gallicus (1530; Syphilis or the French Disease), a work in rhyme presenting the disease.

1553

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge [PL]
Miguel Serveto describes the circulation of blood from heart to lungs through the pulmonary circulation; accused of heresy, he is burned at the stake.

1559

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge
Realdo Columbo describes the human embryo.

1569

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge
Nicolas Monardes’ Dos Libros, a latinized version of an Aztec herbal (1552), describes Western Hemisphere plant medicines and features illustrations resembling European ones, including the first published illustration of tobacco. The formalized style suggests that the illustrators were following the traditions of the Spanish rather than an indigenous style of drawing.

1565

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge [PM][DP]
Petrus Severinus of Denmark. First spagyric physician in Venice, explains the teachings of Paracelsus in scholarly terms, Idea Medicinae Philosophicae.

1566

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge [DP]
Girolamo Cardano introduces the Empirical aphorism, ‘Omne Similia Similibus Confirmatur‘, i.e., “everything similar is confirmed by/in the similar.”

1570

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge
John Woodall Ship (d. 1643), first Surgeon General of the East India Company, recorded a substantial reduction in cases of scurvy after giving extra lemon juice to sailors; recommended in The Surgions Mate, a tutorial for apprentice ship surgeons.

1578

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge [DP]
William Harvey (d. 1657) Pivotal influence in formation of modern medical science. De motu cordis et sanguinis (On the Motion of the Heart and Blood), first published in 1628. De generatione animalium (On the Generation of Animals), published in 1651, led to his often being referred to as the “father” of embryology; considered by some as a predecessor to systems biology. (Auffray, C. and Noble, D. “Origins of Systems Biology in William Harvey’s Masterpiece on the Movement of the Heart and the Blood in Animals.” International Journal of Molecular Sciences. 2009 Apr; 10(4): 1658-1669.)

1590

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge
Hans and Zacharias Janssen, Dutch spectacle-makers and father-and-son team, invent the first compound microscope.

1596

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge [DP]
René Descartes (d. 1650) Influential substance dualist: Proposed matter and immaterial mind as two fundamentally different types of substance. Viewed animals and humans as completely mechanistic automata. Proposed that mechanical events could produce conscious experiences. “Descartes contended that rational thought was the necessary and sufficient condition of the soul, and that the pineal gland was the seat of rational thought. The pineal gland held this seat because it was thought to be the only midline structure that was single and mobile. Its singleness allowed for a unity of inputs from the nervous system, and its mobility allowed for redirection of airy spirits within the ventricles to animate the body.” (Abhyankar, R. “On the Seat of the Soul: Descartes’ Pineal Gland.” Neurology. April 14, 2020; 94 (15 Supplement)). The pineal thus became, in the words of Geoffrey Jefferson, “the nodal point of Cartesian dualism.” (Walker, A.E. (1960). Sir Geoffrey Jefferson: Selected papers. Charles C. Thomas, Springfield, IL)

1580-1720

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge [PM][DP]
In Early Modern England, “‘Nature’ denoted a specific bodily agent which acted intelligently to restore health. Personified as a benevolent woman who inhabited the body, Nature proved to be a resilient and enduring concept, widely recognised throughout the early modern period. …, the whole rationale behind medical treatment, together with understandings of how the body worked, rested on the precept that Nature is the healer of disease.” (Newton, H. “’Nature Concocts & Expels’: The Agents and Processes of Recovery from Disease in Early Modern England.” Social History of Medicine. 2015 Aug; 28(3):465-486.)

16th Century to 19th Century

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge [PM][DP]
Neo-Hippocratism, a term not introduced until 1926, was “already influential during the Renaissance, and was the subject of numerous forms of theorization between the late seventeenth and mid-nineteenth century”. Neo-Hippocratism applies the writings of the Hippocratic Corpus in viewing the whole person and their context in assessing patients, their diagnosis, and treatment, and emphasizing “the study of the influence that ‘places’ and ‘climate’ have on health. The movement saw a revival in popularity with physicians after the First World War, particularly in Western Europe, with Alexander Polycleitos Cawadias (1884-1971) being a major proponent. (Cawadias, A. P. (1931). “Neo-Hippocratism”. British Medical Journal. 2 (3696): 869-869; Cantor, David, ed. (2016). Reinventing Hippocrates; Fournier, P., and Frioux, S. (2022). “The Heritage of Neo-Hippocratism in Environmental Thought (Sixteenth-Nineteenth Century)”.)

17th Century

1616

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge [PM]
Nicholas Culpeper (d. 1654). English botanist, herbalist, physician, astrologer and educator; aimed to bring medical knowledge directly to common folk; wrote in the vernacular, The English Physician (1652), The Complete Herbal (1653), and Astrological Judgement of Diseases from the Decumbiture of the Sick (Semeiotica Uranica) (1655).

1618

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge [PL][PM][DP]
Pharmacopoeia Londinensis (London Pharmacopoeia) first standard list of approved medicines in England, with ingredients and methods of preparation.

1624

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge [PM][DP]
Thomas Sydenham, MD, (d. 1689). Often described as the “English Hippocrates,” known for his treatment of feverish diseases, emphasized observation by the physician, notably in his treatise on hysteria. He discussed coction and the vis medicatrix naturae in citing fever as a healing response. Even though he based his treatments on experience rather than theory, he attempted to classify cases by disease, in contrast to Hippocratic teachings focusing on the ill person and their response pattern. “That practice and that alone will do good which elicits the indications of cure out of the phenomena of the disease itself.”

1632

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge [PM]
Praxis Medicinae, or, The Physicians Practice. Walter Bruele. London.

1634

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge [PM]
The Workes of That Famous Chirurgion Ambrose Parey. Ambroise Paré.

1642

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge [DP]
Isaac Newton (d. 1727). English mathematician, physicist and alchemist. Key figure in the scientific revolution with Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, 1687) providing the foundation of classical mechanics. Prolonged debate with Goethe over the nature and expression of color.

1649

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge [PL]
A Physical Directory, or a Translation of the London Dispensatory, made by the Colledge of Physicians in London, a translation of the Pharmacopoeia Londinensis of 1618.

1652

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge [PM]
Galen’s Art of Physic. Galen., translated by Nicholas Culpeper, London.

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge [PM]
The English Physician, later known as The Complete Herbal (1653 ff.). Nicholas Culpeper. Royal College of Physicians of London.

1653

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge [PM]
Typus Sympathicus Microcosmi cum Megacosmo. Oedipi Aegyptiaci Gumns Hierogl. Athanasii Kircheri Soc. Iesu Oedipi Aegyptici. Tomi Secundi. Pars Altera complectens sex posteriores classes. Kircher, Athanasius, (S.I.), 1602-1680; Mascardi, Vitale c.1653.*

1655

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge [PM]
Astrological Judgement of Diseases from the Decumbiture of the Sick. Nicholas Culpeper. One of the most detailed documents on susceptibility, prognosis and pattern differentiation using medical astrology in Early Modern Europe.

1658

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge
The Secret Miracles of Nature. Lemnius Levinus. London; first published in Latin in 1559.

1660

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge [PM][DP]
Georg Ernst Stahl, MD (d. 1734). Known as founder of Vitalism and key theorist in framing the early modern concept of Anima Medica. Controversy arose in subsequent debate due to his theory of a special power outside and independent of the physical body. Gunnar Stollberg later proposed that Vitalism developed in three stages: 1) Stahl’s animism (1660-1734); 2) the conceptualization of the vital force (1770s-1840s); and 3) life conceptualized as an organizing power. (Stollberg, G. “Vitalism and Vital Force in Life Sciences – The Demise and Life of a Scientific Conception”.) https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=03699aed1f6ead09c2287faa1016e5369a40394d

1662

[PM]Practice Models and Care Delivery
Sigmund Hahn (d. 1742). Silesian physician and hydrotherapist; revived the use of the cold pack in exanthematous fevers.

1694

[PM]Practice Models and Care Delivery
Johann Gottfried Hahn (d. 1753, Germany) physician and precursor of clinical hydrotherapy.

1696

[PM]Practice Models and Care Delivery [HK]
Johann Sigmund Hahn (1664-1773) built of system of therapeutics based on drinking and bathing in cold water (Psychroluposia; Leiden, 1738). His work was further developed by his son Johann Gottfried Hahn.

18th Century

1705

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge [PM][DP]
Hieronymous David Gaub (d. 1780). Published textbook of pathology, 1758, Institutiones Pathologiae Medicinalis, that sought to bring all expressions of mechanistic, dynamic, and spiritual doctrines into agreement, devoting special chapter to “Vires Naturae Medicatrices” (“Critical Retrospect of Medical and Physical Literature: Dr. Hufeland’s System of Practical Medicine.” The Medical and Physical Journal. 1801; pg. 171.)

1706

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge [PM][LR][MC]
Sarah (née Wallin) Mapp (d. 1737). English bonesetter whose effective treatments in London and Epsom won disdain from physicians who failed in attempts to prosecute and suppress her after she threatened the male-dominated physician monopoly by treating patients of merchant and upper classes.

1707

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge
Elizabeth Blackwell (née Blachrie) (d. 1758). Scottish botanical illustrator. Authored The Curious Herbal, containing 500 engravings of plants.

1722

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge [DP]
Theophile de Bordeau (d. 1776). Influenced by Stahl’s ideas and considered by some as a founder of Vitalism as a distinct school of thought in science and medicine.

1727

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge [DP]
James Hutton (d. 1797). Often considered forerunner of modern geoscience; introduced the concept of the rock cycle and suggested the proper study of Earth should be ‘geophysiology.’ Hutton’s concept, living Earth, acknowledged by James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis as a forerunner to Gaia hypothesis.

1738

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge [PM]
Psychroluposia veterum renovata. (On the Power and Effect of Cold Water). Johann Sigmund Hahn. Later reissued by Wilhelm Winternitz.

1747

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge [PM][DP]
James Lind, MD, a Scottish physician, conducts first controlled clinical trial involving a group of twelve sailors afflicted with scurvy. He divided them into six groups of two men each with one of six treatment arms receiving two oranges and one lemon. Findings published as A Treatise of the Scurvy in 1753 established the role of citrus fruits in preventing and treating scurvy although the key role of vitamin C was not confirmed until Albert Szent-Györgyi discovered ascorbic acid in the 1930s.

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge [PM]
Rev. John Wesley. Primitive physick: or, an easy and natural method of curing most diseases. •

1755

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge [PM][DP]
Christian Friedrich Samuel Hahnemann, MD (d. 1843) of Saxony. Formulator of homeopathic theory and practice. Translator and Empirical physician who developed modern homeopathic theory, including the theory of the vital force; the systematic methodology of clinical provings, techniques of trituration, potentization and other pharmacy practice. Used ultra-dilute, potentized agents based on principle of Similimum to focus and amplify the individual’s healing response pattern. Author of the revolutionary text, Organon Der Rationellen Heilkunde (The Organon of Rational Healing Art) (1810).

1756

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge [PM]
Nature the Best Physician: A Matter of Fact, Evinced From a Most Remarkable Variolous Case, Communicated by the Learned Dr. Wilmot to the Late Dr. Mead. And Now Set Forth in a Poetical Narrative. David Maxwell, MD.

1762

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge [PM][DP]
Christof Wilhelm Friedrich Hufeland, MD (d. 1836) of Saxony. Key proponent of vitalistic medicine; wrote System of Practical Medicine (System der praktischen Heilkunde, 1818-1828); Makrobiotik (healthy living) concepts of Heilkraft der Natur; key concepts and modalities underlying modern natural medicine: vis medicatrix naturae, vis natura regeneratrix (self-healing power), and vis vitalis (vital force).
“Medicus naturae minister, non magister. – The physician must not be the magister, but the minister naturae.” (J. W. Anderson. “On the Vis Medicatrix Naturæ.” Glasgow Medical Journal, Nov. 1885).
Upon receiving a copy of Makrobiotik, Immanuel Kant, responded favorably in an open letter that Hufeland published in his Journal and that forms the third part of Kant’s Conflict of the Faculties (1798). Hahnemann’s synchronous teachings (Die Homöopathie) promoted by Hufeland.

1769

[PM]Practice Models and Care Delivery [HK][PL][DP]
Samuel Thomson (d. 1843). Founder of culturally and therapeutically influential American vitalistic system of botanical medicine. Thomsonianism patented as Thomson’s Improved Botanic System of Medicine, emphasized self-treatment by individuals and families, rather than relying on physicians who were criticized as educated elites. Key proponent of domestic self-care, literacy and local study groups, bioregional plant medicines, vital force, purification, and elimination.

1772

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge [PM]
Johann Gottfried Rademacher, MD (d. 1849). Developed concept of organ-specific remedies (organopathy) in Erfahrungsheillehre (Empiric Medical Practice), published 1841, later translated as Rademacher’s Universal and Organ Remedies.

1774

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge [HK][DP]
Joseph Priestley (1733-1804). English chemist, theologian and natural philosopher, isolates and categorizes oxygen (“dephlogisticated air”) by thermal decomposition of mercuric oxide; discovers nine other “airs”, including carbon monoxide (CO), nitric oxide (NO), nitrous oxide (N2O), ammonia (NH3), sulfur dioxide (SO2), and nitrogen peroxide (N2O4) as well as the carbon cycle), defends phlogiston theory, publishes Observations on Different Kinds of Air (1774-1786); and combines Enlightenment rationalism with Christian theism.

1778

[PM]Practice Models and Care Delivery [HK]
Paul Joseph Barthez (1734-1806). A physician of the Montpellier school and later consulting physician to the King of France, publishes Nouveaux élémens de la science de l’homme, his most famous work, where he uses the expression força vital “vital principle” in discussing the cause of the phenomena of life. His approach to Vitalism was not bound to a spiritualistic or to a materialistic interpretation of life’s nature.

1788

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge [PM][DP]
Isaac Jennings (d. 1874). Founder of Orthopathy (1822); stated, “right action or right suffering, that disease was the right action of the body functioning under lawful and orderly conditions at all times;” gave insight into theory of enervation; debated Trall on theory of disease. Orthopathy renamed ‘Natural Hygiene’ by Herbert Shelton.

1790

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge [PM][DP]
Samuel Hahnemann verifies curative action of Cinchona bark (Cinchona officinalis) using homeopathic methodology of clinical provings; condemns the prevalent practice of bloodletting as ill-founded and dangerous.

1794

[PM]Practice Models and Care Delivery [HK][DP]
Rev. Sylvester Graham (d. 1851) Health reform leader in early 1830s movement known as Grahamism; asserted right living and proper hygiene to prevent illness, enhance health, and improve longevity; carried his interpretation of Christian theology into moral and behavioral implications for health and disease.

1794

[AI]Schools and Educational Councils [PM][PA]
Wooster Beach, MD (d. 1868). Author, educator, and early leader of Reform Medicine; founder of the Eclectic medical movement; developed his own botanical medical system as alternative to Regular Medicine and Thomsonians; founded Reformed Medical College of New York.
Beach advocated treating disease with nature’s remedies, especially plant medicines and opposed the prevailing heroic practices of purging with mercurials and of blood-letting. In contrast, he advised students and practitioners to maintain an open mind, observe without prejudice, and avoid routinized prescribing, particularly when it was harmful to the patient’s vitality. In 1832, when Asiatic cholera appeared in New York City he was appointed by one of the aldermen to take care of poor residents and treated nearly a thousand cases with good results, avoiding the use of calomel and all heroic treatment. His writings were consolidated into An Improved System of Midwifery: Adapted to the Reformed Practice of Medicine … ; to which is Annexed, a Compendium of the Treatment of Female and Infantile Diseases ; with Remarks on Physiological and Moral Elevation. (1848). In 1855 he became president of the National Eclectic Medical Association.

1796

[PM]Practice Models and Care Delivery [HK][MC]
Edward Jenner (1749-1823), English physician, tests smallpox vaccination method by inoculating James Phipps, an eight-year-old boy who was the son of Jenner’s gardener, using pus from cowpox blisters on the hands of Sarah Nelmes, a milkmaid who had caught cowpox from a cow. The terms ‘vaccine’ and ‘vaccination’ derive from Variolae vaccinae (‘smallpox of the cow’), which Jenner penned to denote cowpox. He describes the protective effect of cowpox against smallpox in Inquiry into the Variolae vaccinae known as the Cow Pox, 1798.

1796

[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge [PM][DP]
Makrobiotik oder Die Kunst, das menschliche Leben zu verlangern (Macrobiotics or the Art of Extending Human Life). Christoph Hufeland, MD. Focuses on self-healing and moderation in all aspects of healthy living.

1798

[PM]Practice Models and Care Delivery [HK]
Johann Schroth (d. 1856). Introduces moist heat therapy, light diet, and fasting treatment; opposes Priessnitz’ cold water treatments and hearty diets. ‘Schroth Cure,’ i.e., wet sheet packs, thirst, light diet, rest.

1798

[PM]Practice Models and Care Delivery [HK]
William Alcott (d. 1859). Pioneered and advanced Hygienic tradition; collaborated with Sylvester Graham. Publications include: Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men; Experience in All Ages; Forty Years in the Wilderness of Pills and Powders.

1799

[PM]Practice Models and Care Delivery [HK][MC]
Humphry Davy (1778–1829) discovers the anesthetic properties of nitrous oxide; he nicknamed it “laughing gas” after noting how it made him laugh.

[PM]Practice Models and Care Delivery [HK][DP]
Vincent Priessnitz (d. 1852) Pioneer and renowned developer of hydrotherapy, with focus on cold water therapy. Widespread long-term influence in Nature Cure lineages.

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