This book examines the social, institutional and cultural setting of medical practices in the medieval town of Montpellier which boasted one of the first universities of the middle ages and a famous school of medicine. Some of its most celebrated masters and their medical works have been thoroughly studied but few of them try to put these in context with a thriving urban community of merchants and craftsmen that were at the core of the city council. Their concurrent efforts will endow Montpellier of a rich health care system featuring not only the university masters but also the cityâs barber-surgeons and apothecaries. Their collective fate is revealed here in an integrated picture of health and society in the middle ages.
Those interested in the history of medicine and/or urban history, social and cultural studies, history of the medieval plague, leprosy, surgery, medicine, pharmacy and public health.