Internal Medicine

While the renaissance anatomists were dissecting, university physicians read and translated classical medical writings, adhering to the concept of the four humours to explain symptoms and exploring astrology to predict epidemics and prognosis. Alchemists provided remedies and pursued their quest for the philosopher's stone which would confer eternal life.

The Enlightenment elicited a fashion for detailed descriptions and classifications of disease based on collections of case notes and also saw the first implementation of controlled trials of remedies such as lime juice for scurvy and digitalis for dropsy. Botany supplanted astrology as the scientific interest of physicians.

Modern medicine emerged during the nineteenth century with the correlation between anatomical pathology and clinical features which led to the classic definitions of diseases and syndromes which remain the basis of nomenclature today.