ABSTRACT
The Christian idea exercised a determining influence on the development of medicine: it gives a different valuation of human life, a fraternal concept of equality and charity which imposed on all the faithful the most severe sacrifices in order to lessen the suffering of others. The practice of medicine was regarded as a work of charity; but concern about medical problems and investigations into the causes of disease seemed a useless and almost culpable study at a time when mystic sentiment predominated. Byzantine medicine, then, should be regarded as the manifestation of a period of decadence, when the transmission of the Roman and Greek civilization to Byzantine Christianity felt the influence of the political and social conditions of a time of complicated intrigue, unbounded luxury, and relaxation of the moral sense. The influence on the development of science exerted by the diffusion of the Christian doctrines and the Neo-Platonists’ philosophy, imbued with mysticism, was of great importance.
