11th Century
1000 CE
[PM]Practice Models and Care Delivery [HK][MC]
Jews, Arabs and Persians practice as court physicians of German
nobility.
1001
[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge [PM]
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
[HK]Experience, Heritage and Knowledge [PM][DP]
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; relevant to naturopathic theory.
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.
12th Century
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;
emphasized healthy living in alignment with 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-Bayṭāṭ r, 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 jursidictions 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: Nature of health and
disease are rooted in one of the five Entia from: • 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
framework of natural laws. Described plants using qualities (i.e., warm,
cold, dry, wet), directly linking to the four elements, temperaments and
humors. 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.)
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.
1518
[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
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. [DP]
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, published 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) Completed 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]
Pharmacopoeia Londinensis (London Pharmacopoeia) first standard list
of approved medicines in England, with ingredients and methods of
preparation. [PM][DP]
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 Physitian, 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 publ. 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”.)
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.
11th 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; authored concept of the rock cycle; 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 12 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.
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: theory of vital
force; systematic methodology of provings; techniques of trituration,
potentization and other pharmacy practice. Used ultra-dilute, potentized
agents based on principle of Similimum to focus and amplify body’s
healing response pattern. Author of revolutionary text, Organon Der
Rationellen Heilkunde (The Organon of Rational Healing Art) (1810).
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 study groups, local herbs, vital force, purification,
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), publ. 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. He
advocated treating disease with nature’s remedies, especially plant
medicines and opposed the prevailing heroic practice of blood-letting and
purging with mercurials. 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), British 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; opposed to 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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