Introduction

This exhibition focuses attention on a crucial page in the history of medicine and health care in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The innovation that occurred in that period did not result from a gradual, rational evolution but formed a clean break with the past. Renewed contact with classical literature prompted a return to the source, tipping medical thinking away from philosophy and toward science, from guesswork to empirical knowledge. Reason won out over speculation. This sudden turnaround in the approach to medicine did not, however, translate immediately into medical practice: it would take three centuries to bear full fruit.

The improved understanding of the structure and function of the human body achieved by a number of brilliant innovators in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries prepared the ground for modern medicine. Medical practice ceased to be based on the teachings of Hippocrates, Galen and Avicenna, which had been its underpinning for centuries. The supposed influence of the stars and other heavenly bodies on diagnosis, prognosis and therapy also ceased to hold true, and the beneficial effects of the bleeding, laxatives and sweat cures that had long formed the basis of treatment were likewise called into question. Belief faded too in the diagnostic and healing powers of precious stones.

It was also in the seventeenth century that forensic medicine emerged within medical practice. The distinction was maintained at social level between physicians – the supposed intellectuals – and surgeons – the ‘manual workers’ who carried out the practical work. Physicians and surgeons were organized into separate confraternities and guilds, each with their own seal and by-laws. A decree of Emperor Charles v in 1540 required every physician to complete a university education before being permitted to practise his profession. A similar requirement was not introduced for surgeons until the second half of the nineteenth century. Pharmacy had been an autonomous branch of medicine since 1231, again with its own seal and rules, despite which the relationship between physicians and pharmacists was often a fraught one in the seventeenth century. The role played by Bruges in the transformation of medicine in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries ought not to be underestimated. The city’s humanist take on charity sparked new thinking within the conception of health care. All these aspects of the history of medicine are explored in detail in the exhibition.

It is our pleasure, therefore to congratulate the three different partners – Musea Brugge, Montanus vzw and the OCMW-Brugge – whose intensive collaboration has culminated in a coherent and fascinating exhibition.

R.A.C. Pannier Honorary Chairman Montanus vzw