The construction of a new form of learning and practicing medicine in medieval Latin Europe.

In this paper I try to analyze the fate of a new medical model that was developed in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in European Latin society, particularly in the southern parts of Latin Europe. This model won the approval of the communities in which it was developed as part of an incipient network of medical care and attention. The new healer (Christian and male) that emerged from this model, whether physician or surgeon, based his practice on his knowledge of Aristotelian natural philosophy. He was an intellectual and a social product fashioned and supported by traditional and new urban leader groups, whether civil or ecclesiastic, Christian or Jewish. Health and healers were considered part of the urban social organization both in large cities and in smaller towns. Full social acceptance of this new model was achieved only after heated debate. In practice, the new way of conceiving of medicine did not begin to become socially accepted outside intellectual circles until the new healer was able to offer specific solutions for the maintenance or restoration of health, both at an individual and at a collective level, and according to the criteria and feelings of the leader groups of the society of that time. Progress in research allows us to identify nine factors, at least, that were involved in the construction of these novelties in late medieval Latin society.

[Elements for the construction of case histories in Galen]. / Elementos para la construcción de las historias clinicas en Galeno.

This note calls attention to Galen's use of different, nonrational elements of Hellenic culture and society in the construction of his case histories.

[The medical world of Juan Gil de Zamora's Historia Naturalis (ca. 1275-1296)]. / El mundo médico de la Historia naturalis (ca. 1275-1296) de Juan Gil de Zamora.

The article describes the authors and works which were quoted by the Franciscan Juan Gil de Zamora in his Historia naturalis, a scientific encyclopaedia written between c. 1275 and before 1296, probably in the Franciscan monastery of Zamora (Kingdom of Castille). Juan Gil made wide use of the Avicenna's Canon, Gilbertus de Aquila (Anglicus)'s Compendium medicine, and Salernitan medical literature. His work contributed to the diffusion of these medical authors and works throughout the Christian intellectual milieu of late medieval Castille. This diffusion was not without problems.