The History of Medicine at Charles University
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The History of Medicine at Charles University JAN BROD, md, frcp Professor of Medicine, Hanover Medical School, Hanover, West Germany The history of the oldest university north of the Alps and that they are Italian. By the same reasoning the Czechs east of Paris, in the heart of the old Czech kingdom of should not be denied the honour of their capital being the Bohemia, in the city of Prague, started with the first seat of the first university in Central Europe. contact between the Czechs and the English on the During his years in Paris, Charles had been a student battlefield of Crecy on 26th August 1346. The blind at the Sorbonne, which he used as the model for the new Czech king, John of Luxembourg (1310-1346), and his University of Prague. From the start, there were four son Charles (1322-1378), were helping their French rela- faculties: Theology, Law, Philosophy (Arts) and Medi- tive, Philip VI, against the English led by Edward III and cine. At first there were no proper buildings and the his son, the Black Prince. King John fell on the field and professors gave their courses in their quarters, but the three ostrich feathers on his helmet have since Charles soon bought the house of the Jew Lazarus in the adorned the coat-of-arms of the Prince of Wales. The new Old City of Prague, and it became a college with 12 king, Charles, while recovering from his wounds at the professors and housed the library. The university was Cistercian monastery at Ourchamps, had time to medi- transferred to Rotlev House, near the church of St tate on his future tasks as successor to his father, whose Gallus, in 1366, which is still the seat of the university romantic chivalrous temperament had made him partici- (Fig- 1). pate in every possible war, leaving his country in a state of chaos and poverty. Charles, known to posterity as the 'Father of his Country', planned the foundation of a Fig. 1. The Karolinum, with the original Gothic window. studium generale' a university in his capital, Prague. The plan was not new. Fifty-four years earlier, his maternal grandfather, Venceslas II (1278-1305) of the old Premysl dynasty, had thought of it but failed to raise the necessary money. Charles approached Pope Clement VI, who, as Petrus Roger, Abbot of Fecamp, had been his childhood tutor, and obtained a golden bull from him, issued in Avignon on 26th January 1347, authorising the foundation of a university in Prague whose degrees would he accepted throughout Christendom. On 7th April 1348 Charles handed over the founding bull to the first Chan- cellor of the new university, the first Archbishop of Prague, Arnost of Pardubice. In his edict Charles expressed his anxiety that 'the ^habitants of his kingdom of Bohemia?thirsting for knowledge?should not be obliged to beg for education in foreign lands but should find a table covered for them in the [Bohemian] kingdom'. (It has been repeatedly main- tained in Germany that the University of Prague was the first German institution of its kind.) Charles's edict clearly stated that the 'studium generale' was intended Primarily for the inhabitants of his own kingdom, the great majority of whom were Czechs, although students from any foreign country were welcome and would receive the same privileges, freedom and royal protection. J^he language of the university was, of course, Latin. *here were already two much older universities in the Holy Roman Empire?in Padua and Bologna?also founded by local princes. Their language was also Latin and they also attracted many students from other parts of the Holy Roman Empire and Europe, but nobody denies Journal of the Royal College of Physicians of London Vol. 16 No. 3 July 1982 195 The officers of the university, who were elected annual- sided with the progressive cardinals who thought that ly by the academic community, were the Rector Magnifi- obedience should be refused to both the Pope in Rome cus and the Deans of the four Faculties. The students and the Pope in Avignon and that a new Pope should be were divided, according to their country of origin, into elected. At the university, whose advice and approval he four 'nations', each of which had one vote. They were: sought, however, Venceslas was out-voted by the three 1. Bohemian, comprising the Czechs and Germans living foreign 'nations'. So it was easy for Hus to persuade the in Bohemia, southern Slavs, and Hungarians. king that the voting arrangements were not in the 2. Poles, Lithuanians, Russians and Silesians. national interest of Czechs, and on 18th January 1409, 3. Bavarians, Germans from Austria, Franconia, Swit- the king issued a decree which reversed the ratio of Czech zerland and the Rhineland, and Dutch. to foreign votes to 3 to 1. This was a Pyrrhic victory for 4. Saxons from Northern Germany and Scandinavia. the Czech cause at the university, for between 2,500 and The reason for the disparity between Czech and foreign 3,000 foreign students and Masters, mostly German, left votes was Charles's wish to attract scholars from abroad Prague and founded a German university in Leipzig in to Prague. In this disparity was the seed of the disaster 1410. With the leading scientific authorities gone, and the that befell the university sixty years later. adherents of the Roman church banned from the univer- All was peaceful in the years 1350-1360. The first sity (in 1416), the life and activities of the university were professor of medicine was the king's personal physician, paralysed and the number of Bachelors of Arts fell to Balthasar from Domazlice, and medicine was also taught three in 1414. by Master Walther, Balthasar's predecessor at the court On 6th July 1415, Hus suffered a martyr's death at the of Charles's father, King John. Medical studies lasted stake in Constance, and the same fate later befell his five years, the curriculum of the first, fourth and fifth friend and colleague, Master Hieronymus of Prague. The years including the writings of Hippocrates (Aphorisms, news of these humiliations spread like fire throughout the Prognostica), Avicenna's Canon, Ga\en's Anatomy and Sur- Bohemian kingdom and incited the masses to revolt. On gery and Gordon's De signis criticis et de phlebotomia; the 30th July 1419, a stone was thrown from the window of second and third years dealt with diet, fevers, urine and the New City Hall at a procession of Hus's followers, who the pulse, diagnosis and therapy. Medicinal plants played then broke into the Town Hall, threw seven councillors an important role in therapy. Of the prominent figures in from the window (the first defenestration of Prague) and Prague medicine during the first 100 years of the univer- appointed their own city officers. When the news reached sity, M. Sigismund Albik (1358-1427), physician to him at his hunting lodge in Kunratice, south of Prague, Charles's son Venceslas IV (1378-1419) deserves men- Venceslas IV suffered a stroke and died a fortnight later. tion. He wrote treatises on personal hygiene, rheuma- The Czechs refused to accept his younger brother Sigis- tism, and antidotes against poisons, as well as several mund as his successor, because they thought him guilty of books on plague. Hus's death, and a war, which lasted until 1434, broke Of the university students, 15 per cent were enrolled in out. University activities were suspended until 1430 and the Faculty of Medicine which in 1405 obtained a build- the Faculty of Medicine was closed in 1460. There is no ing from Venceslas IV. The degrees open to the medical record of activity for the following 150 years. During students were Master of Obstetrics, Master of Surgery, those years medicine was taught as a craft by apprentice- and Doctor of Medicine; in the third year the bachelor- ship. In spite of this, several Czech monographs were ship was obligatory. Between 1366 and 1409 the number published?on plague (Berka from Chocen, 1494-1545), of Bachelors of Arts (which included medicine, astronomy on medicinal herbs (Thaddeus Hajek, 1525-1600, physi- and law) bestowed was 3,823, and during the same period cian to King Rudolf II (1576-1611) and founder of the 844 Masters of Arts were created. The total number of Czech botanical nomenclature); on personal hygiene (A. students at any one time was up to 10,000. University life Huber, A. Rosacius), and on rules for expectant mothers was very intensive and Charles IV frequently took part in (Nicolas Klaudyan). the weekly disputations. In 1555 the first hereditary Habsburg king on the But storms lay ahead. The disorders in the Catholic Czech throne, Ferdinand I (1526-1564), founded a Jesuit church, the luxurious life of the rich clergy, the papal college in the Clementinum in Prague (Universitas Fer- schism and the selling of indulgences excited widespread dinandea), which was richly endowed. Charles Universi- criticism, particularly in the writings of the Oxford ty was reformed towards the end of the sixteenth century. philosopher and theologian, John Wycliffe. This learned At the invitation of the king's astronomer, the Dane man was a friend of Queen Anne, sister of Venceslas IV Tycho Brahe, Jan Jesenius, a German-speaking Slovak and wife of Richard II of England. After her death in nobleman educated in medicine in Leipzig and Padua, 1394, her Czech courtiers returned to Prague and they professor of surgery and anatomy in Wittenberg, carried and Czech students may have brought Wycliffe's writings out, on 6th June 1600, the first public autopsy in Prague with them.