Historia y Humanidades

Neurology in mediaeval medical poetry in Latin

V. de Frutos-González, Á.L. Guerrero-Peral [REV NEUROL 2009;48:540-544] PMID: 19434589 DOI: https://doi.org/10.33588/rn.4810.2009090

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Volumen 48 | Number 10 | Nº of views of the article 5.673 | Nº of PDF downloads 645 | Article publication date 14/05/2009

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ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION Medical poems written in Latin during the Middle Ages constitute an important part of mediaeval literature on medicine and offer the advantage of making it easier for the reader to memorise their contents. They were to exert a notable influence of later medical literature. DEVELOPMENT. An analysis of works such as Medicinalis liber by Benedictus Crispus of Milan; De cultura hortorum by Walahfrid Strabo; the anonymous work known as Macer floridus; De pulsibus, De urinis, and De signis et symptomatibus aegritudinum, three treatises by Aegidius of Corbeil or the Poema anatomicum, belonging to the Salerno Medical School, reveals what neurological aspects were known in the Middle Ages and how important this medical discipline was in that period. References to pathologies in the field of neurology are very frequent in mediaeval medical poems in Latin. They deal with diseases involving the nerves, cephalea, tremors, epilepsy, vertigos and disorders affecting memory or the sense organs.

CONCLUSIONS These mediaeval medical works in Latin offer us an interesting insight into the way neurological diseases were viewed by western physicians in the Middle Ages, as well as describing the remedies that were employed at that time to treat them, most of which involved the use of plants that were considered to have medicinal properties. KeywordsLatin poems Mediaeval medicine Mediaeval neurology Medical poems

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Historia y Humanidades

Neurology in mediaeval medical poetry in Latin