ABSTRACT
European medicine had been irrevocably influenced by the movement of medical education into the universities during the medieval period. The new knowledge of the post-Renaissance period ignited a fury of activity in the sciences over the next three centuries. The curricula of the private colleges were shaped according to the inclinations of their founders and teachers. Economic growth was fuelled by virtually unlimited access to an expanding marketplace. Research laboratories throughout Europe were feverishly looking for drugs that could treat bacterial infections, a source of major mortality at the time. The discovery of sulphanilamide and the newer microbial antibiotics soon after were major triumphs for biomedicine. Science, technology and human determination had uncovered entire new classes of medicines of extraordinary power. Social, economic and environmental influences on human wellbeing remained the domain of social scientists and a small group of epidemiologists.
