ABSTRACT
This chapter briefly considers what was distinctive about medicine and the medical profession in western Europe in the 800 years or so before the emergence of the European medical scientists who finally broke through the web of customs inherited from ancient times. For a variety of reasons (the precise nature of which is still in dispute among certain breeds of historians and philosophers), this breakthrough would be very long in coming. Four hundred years after Europeans had brought about the beginnings of radical change in one field of human endeavor (economic globalization beginning soon after 1450), European medical practitioners continued to be caught up in their ancient professional web.
