Where the Philosopher Finishes, the Physician Begins: Medicine and the Arts Course in Thirteenth-Century Oxford

Abstract

In the thirteenth century the English universities were different from others, particularly those in the south of Europe, in two important ways: they taught more natural philosophy and less medicine. But the survival of students’ notes from the second half of the century shows that in the formal course of lectures on natural philosophy attention was paid to medicine inside the arts course. The present discussion examines the nature of this medical material and the institutional and intellectual relationship between medicine and philosophy.