Learning Medieval Medicine: The Boundaries of University Teaching. Introduction

Abstract

Taken together, these essays reveal that university medicine, while generated and sustained within specific institutional structures, manifested itself in various forms well beyond the confines of the university. In doing so, it dictated the nature of medical learning at all levels of society. It determined where it could be taught (in local schools and even in the home), to whom (by and large men, and not women), and what sort of medical learning was appropriate (e.g. cosmetics for laywomen). University medicine thus penetrated all levels of society, yet it remained firmly in the control of male university-educated physicians. Taken together, these essays demonstrate that the boundaries of university medicine were certainly flexible and invariably shifting; but they were always the product of negotiation between the parties involved, most notably the master and his student, and the physician and his patient.