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Article: Medicine
- Article from:
- Europe, 1450 to 1789: Encyclopedia of the Early Modern World
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 The Gale Group Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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MEDICINE
MEDICINE.
Medicine in the early modern era was characterized by several distinctive features. First, the understanding of illness and its treatment was based on assumptions that were inherited from antiquity and differed conspicuously from our own ideas. Second, physicians comprised but one group among a host of healers who routinely competed with each other for access to patients. Thus, in contrast to medicine today, physicians neither dominated nor directed the care of most of the sick. Third, the delivery of health care was not centered in hospitals or specialized clinics. Hospitals certainly were a feature of early modern medicine, but their role in the delivery of health ...