ABSTRACT
The association of the friars' health with their vocation brought a new imperative to their need and obligation to get medical advice. Humbert of Romans clearly expressed his approval of the practice of medicine, not only for its practical value to health and recovery, but also its valuable contribution to religion through the physician's knowledge of the fragility of the body, through the acts of mercy which were performed by him and through the usefulness of bodily medicine to the medicine of the spirit. There was already some evidence of medical specialisation in the thirteenth century, and individual practitioners in Bologna and elsewhere dealt with the cure of eyes, hernias or wounds. In Bologna people can find evidence of some of the medical practitioners, sometimes acting in different capacities, who served both Franciscans and Dominicans. The medical duties of the apothecary and the pharmaceutical and surgical duties of the physician or barber-surgeon are not always clearly separated at this time.
