Aristotle and the recovery of Greek Medicine

 The Loss and Recovery of Greek Medicine in the West

After the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century, most works of the Greek physicians were lost to Western Europe.

In the 14th and 15th centuries, however, Western Europeans began to rediscover Greek scientific and medical texts. This was due in part to the discovery of Arab repositories of learning in Spain and elsewhere during the Crusades as well as the immigration to Italy of Byzantine scholars at the fall of Constantinople in 1453.

At first Greek theories, prescriptions, and procedures were accepted as medical dogma about human anatomy, physiology, and treatment. Later, however, the Greeks’ entreaties to their readers to observe the human body and the world around them won out, and scholars began to perform their own research, leading to much of the medicine practiced in the West today.

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...But save me. Take me to the ship, cut this arrow out of my leg, wash the blood from it with warm water and put the right things on it - the plants they say you have learned about from Achilles who learned them from Chiron, the best of the Centaurs."-The Iliad of Homer, Book XI