Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Schola Medica Salernitana

  • Women surgeons

    Moustapha Abousamra Ventura, California, United States   Cactus flower with buds.Image courtesy of the author. Last spring, I spent three months in the Texas Hill Country. It is a place that at once can be beautiful and hostile. The fields of blue bonnets in full bloom are breathtaking. The cacti that abound around barbed wire…

  • Salernitan women

    Vicent Rodilla Alicia López-Castellano Valencia, Spain   Figure 1. A miniature from Avicenna’s Canon representing the Salernitan Medical School. Source The first medical school in the Western world is thought to be the Schola Medica Salernitana (Figure 1), which traces its origins to the dispensary of an early medieval monastery.1 The medical school at Salerno…

  • A brief history of kidney transplantation

    Laura Carreras-Planella Marcella Franquesa Ricardo Lauzurica Francesc E. Borràs Barcelona, Spain   We may think of renal transplantation as routine therapy today, but this procedure has taken centuries to develop and is marked by important events in the history of science. An ancient description of the kidneys is found in the Egyptian Ebers Papyrus, dated…

  • Schola Medica Salernitana and medieval medical philosophy

    James MarcumWaco, Texas, United States The naissance of Schola Medica Salernitana, or the medical school at Salerno, on the Italian southwest coast is shrouded in myth and controversy. According to one tradition, the school’s beginning dates to Parmenides, a pre-Socratic philosopher who, in 540 BC, founded a medical school in the Greek colony of Elea…