Introduction

In November 2000 a one-day symposium on ‘Medical Practice around the Year 1000’ was held at the Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, Oxford. The stimulus and focus for this symposium was the special issue, under our guest editorship, of Social History of Medicine (Vol. 13, No. 2) entitled ‘The Year 1000: Medical Practice at the End of the First Millennium’. The articles forming the special issue originated in a weekly seminar held in 1999, also at the Wellcome Unit in Oxford. There were several important topics and interpretations that emerged in the papers forming this special issue, and the symposium not only provided the opportunity for the speakers at the original seminar series to meet together for the first time but also allowed other scholars working on various aspects of early medieval medicine – both European and Middle Eastern – to gather for animated discussion.

The meeting was divided into four sessions, each of which began with a ten- to twenty-minute discussion paper from a moderator. The four sessions were (1) ‘Interpreting Texts’, moderated by Faith Wallis; (2) ‘Religion, magic, and medicine’, moderated by Cornelius O’Boyle; (3) ‘Palaeopathology’, moderated by Robert Arnott; and (4) ‘Theory versus Practice’, moderated by Vivian Nutton. In addition to the four moderators and the two organizers, the participants included Cristina Álvarez-Millán, Debby Banham, David Bennett, Charles Burnett, Klaus-Dietrich Fischer, Rebecca Flemming, Roger French, Teresa Huguet-Termes, Tony Hunt, Penelope Johnstone, Peter Jones, Elinor Lieber, Piers Mitchell, Clare Pilsworth, and Peter Pormann.

Throughout, Peter Pormann entered into his laptop computer a summary account of the debates. What follows is our partial elaboration of his and our own notes. In the interest of brevity and coherence, we have rearranged some of the points made in the introductory remarks and in the discussions, and have tried to report only the leading ideas rather than the details of the arguments or the specific items of information exchanged. We have not named or quoted directly any of the participants. Errors, obscurities and infelicities in what follows are thus entirely our own responsibility. What we offer here is much less a transcript than our own gloss on what was said. But we hope that this solution to the problem of reporting a wide-ranging debate will stimulate contributors to add their own supplements to our report.

If anyone else reading this web page should wish to join the discussion, expand upon any of the points made, or add pertinent material of other kinds (such as a transcription of a medical text of the period) please e-mail either Peregrine Horden or Emilie Savage-Smith.