The Middle Ages and the Renaissance saw medicine growth through the anatomy of the human body. Nevertheless, body understandings remain under the control of the Church.
Any controversies are banished. For example, Michel Servet, who explained that venous blood was first purified by lungs before going to the heart, was burned with all his writings. In those times, surgery was considered as a manual work, scorned by those who speak in Latin about medical philosophy.
During the seventieth century, beliefs are disregarded towards observation, analysis and logical reason. Human body is studied like a machine that one tries to catch the mechanism. Each organ is seen as a part of a very complex machine.
This does not prevent the survival of a metaphysical vision. During the eightieth century, animist philosophy thinks that our body is not only a site with physicochemical exchanges but also depends on “vital impulse”.
More than an increasing knowledge, the living conditions (hygiene) helps getting a better health. Occidental Medicine succeeds in surgical domain and in treating symptoms. Restricting body to a mechanical system, occidental medicine gets some lacks in psychosomatic and chronic disorders, and for some psychoses.
Even the relative success of actual pharmacopoeia, drugs induce most of the time side effects.
Then, we frequently have some 5- or 6-drug orders to treat a single disease. One or two are really relevant, the other ones is to treat side effects.
Actually, western medicine is an emergency medicine, treating only when symptoms appear.
Only vaccination concerns the preventive vision of modern medicine. It must thus be supplemented by other kinds of therapy.
Modern medical science rests upon a Greek foundation. The Naturalist philosophers were the first to separate medicine from any divine influences, during the sixth century B.C.
Among these pioneers, we can distinguish:
- Pythagore who defined 4 components of our body: air, water, fire and ground,
- Alcméon who was the first to dissect animals and discovered the optic nerves.
We have to wait one century for Hippocrates drawing up a medical protocol for patients. Today, all physicians swear on the text of a man who thought that we were a set of various energies and elements:
- four fundamental elements (fire, water, ground and air),
- four characters (heat, cold, dryness and the wet one),
- four moods (blood, the lymph or phlegm, the yellow bile and the black bile).
The first human dissections took place during the Third century B.C with Alexandrian anatomists. They were then able to study neurology, vascular system and brain. Nevertheless, Greeks were always impregnated of mysticism and mythology. They mainly refused these discoveries which upset their culture.
It is during the first century that Celse writes the first complete work on medicine. It distinguishes three types of care:
- diet therapy,
- drug therapy,
- surgical operation.
First hospitals appeared in , during the fourth century. Opened thanks to Christian charity, they especially look after leprosy. The first-, most famous- and best medicine schools were located in Arabian lands.
