The article deals with six copies of a medical compendium recently identified in manuscripts kept in Czech libraries. This compendium, called Avicennae Canon abbreviatus in foreign catalogues, has a distinctive prologue. According to the prologue, it was originally a university lecture, but it has not been clear at which university it was given. Two recently identified texts state that the university in question was the University of Vienna. The reworked lecture circulated in two redactions.
The study examines five names of medieval medical practitioners: barber, doctor, leech, physician, and surgeon. The aim is to view the semantic change of those names in non-medical prose texts from the Middle English period. The analysis also considers their origin, frequency, semantic fields, function and both metaphorical and non-metaphorical meanings in Middle English and later. Furthermore, the research verifies to what extent the findings of Sylwanowicz (2003) are confirmed by the results of a similar examination of a non-medical corpus. The data for the study come from the Innsbruck Corpus of Middle English Prose, with the support of historical dictionaries.
The study focuses on the relation of the medieval person to illness and physicians, particularly taking into account the economic accessibility of treatment and the overall social dimension of the issue. It first deal with the costs for medical care and the different treatment methods, which considered the social position of the patient. It further also introduces the possibility of community, care in spittal fields, and last but not least also the influence of magical practices and faith in the miraculous abilities of the saints.
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