[Criticism of the physician in the middle ages--examples and trends from the 6th to the 12th century].

The author presents examples of a critical attitude towards medicine and physicians which may be observed, with changing tendencies, throughout the Middle Ages. First, medicine was despised as a mechanical art or suspected of paganism because of its literary sources. Later, the divine nature of disease and healing on the one hand and the uselessness of medicine on the other were stressed. Finally, the integration, at the universities, of medicine in the system of scholastic learning was criticized by more practically minded men. Similar criticism may be observed in the Islamic world. As valiant defenders of medicine, the author quotes the learned Isidore of Sevilla (d.636) and the famous Rhazes (b.865) as well as the anonymous author of the "Lorscher Arzneibuch" of the 8th century.