The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity (The Norton History of Science)

‘If a physician has performed a major operation on a lord with a bronze lancet and has saved the lord’s life . . . he shall receive ten shekels of silver’ (more than a craftsman’s annual pay); but if he caused the death of such a notable, his hand would be chopped off.

Disease is a social development no less than the medicine that combats it.

(‘a night with Venus, a lifetime with mercury’, people quipped).

wounds should be kept dry, but suppuration was deemed essential to healing; the pus supposedly derived from vitiated blood which needed to be expelled from the body: pus was thus a desirable evacuation. Fractures were to be reduced and immobilized with splints and bandages. For bladder stones, catheterization was advocated, never lithotomy

‘our natures are the physicians of our diseases’,

‘such as are craftsmen therein’; and, as a last resort in case of gangrene, amputation might be performed

Post-Vesalian investigations dramatically advanced knowledge of the structures and functions of the living organism.

The teachings of antiquity,

The doctor should therefore observe sickness, attending the patient and identifying symptom clusters and their rhythms.