Learned medicine

Learned medicine is a term applied to the European medical tradition in the Early Modern period, when it experienced the tension between the texts derived from ancient Greek medicine, particularly by followers of the teachings attributed to Hippocrates, and those of Galen, and the recent theories of natural philosophy. The Renaissance principle ad fontes applied to Galen sought to establish better texts of his writings, free from later accretions, and was influential in the early 16th century. Historians use the term medical humanism to define this textual activity, pursued for its own sake.

Learned medicine centred on the practica, a genre of Latin text on nosology. Its interests were less in the abstract reasoning of the medieval medicine on which it built, and the tradition of Avicenna, than on the diagnosis of particular diseases. The tradition from Galen valued it less than theoretical concepts, but from the 15th century its status in learned medicine rose.Practica, covering diagnosis and therapies, was contrasted with theorica, which dealt with physiology and abstract thought on health and illness.

"Learned medicine" in this sense was also an academic discipline. It was taught in European universities, and its faculty had the same status as those of theology and law. Learned medicine is typically contrasted with the folk medicine of the period, but it has been argued that the distinction is not rigorous. Its Galenic teachings were challenged successively by Paracelsianism and Helmontianism.

Around the year 1500 an issue for learned medicine was the nature of morbus gallicus, now identified as venereal syphilis. Alessandro Benedetti, in particular, advocated the line that it was a novel disease, not described in the traditional authorities. Niccolo Leoniceno conceded that in terms of symptoms it could not be identified as known to the ancients; but denied that novel diseases could exist.

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