Methodology of Scientific Transmission in the Middle Ages

Abstract

The objective of this article is to analyze the mode of transmission of medical scientific knowledge in the Middle Ages. It is based on two unpublished manuscripts, a Tacuinum sanitatis and a Treatise on the Gout, which are start from different assumptions and motivations, but which share the will to disseminate certain useful knowledge to cure the disease. The first manuscript exhibits little rigour and seems to hjave been written in ored to prove the supremacy of empirical science over theoretical science. The second one is methodologically more rigorous and integrative, since it tries to maintain a balance between theoretical and practical knowledge. The coexistence of both manuscripts certifies two different ways of practising medicine in the middle of the 15th century.