La grande aventure du savoir médical

Curated by Dr Philippe Abastado, clinical cardiologist and research director in epistemology applied to medicine at the Université Paris 7, the exhibition explores the transmission of medical knowledge from Antiquity to the early modern period. A human adventure of man for man, medicine passes from one civilisation to another, despite wars and conflicts, despite political and economic upheavals, and sometimes beyond religious and moral reservations.

From Greece to Rome, from Rome to Alexandria, from Alexandria to Baghdad, from Baghdad to Padua… medical knowledge has the book as its main tool, a book that also bears witness to the extraordinary continuity of the ethics of the medical profession, particularly in its relationship with patients.

Medical texts remain alive, as shown by many manuscripts annotated and commented on by physicians of several generations, sometimes in different languages.

Between the 7th and the 16th century of the Common Era, the Arab-Muslim world profoundly shaped medicine through a major evolution in both its concepts and its techniques.

This long period opens and closes with a linguistic revolution: the shift from Greek to Arabic, then from Arabic to Latin, two privileged moments of questioning and debate.

Across the five themes of the exhibition route – translating, transmitting, debating, experimenting, healing – richly illuminated manuscripts, incunabula and printed books illustrated with engravings occupy the heart of the display, alongside objects used in pharmacopoeia and surgery.

Alongside the heritage collection, digital animations invite visitors to discover the geography of this medical adventure, its great figures, their theories on the body, their practices of consultation, their recommendations for maintaining good health, the preparation of compound medicines… The exhibition aims to raise awareness of medical knowledge as the product of a centuries-long mingling of people and influences, championing tolerance and openness to others in times of identity withdrawal and certainties.