Learned medicine

Learned medicine is a term applied to the European medical tradition in the Early Modern period, when it experienced the tension between the texts derived from ancient Greek medicine, particularly by followers of the teachings attributed to Hippocrates, and those of Galen, and the recent theories of natural philosophy. The Renaissance principle ad fontes applied to Galen sought to establish better texts of his writings, free from later accretions, and was influential in the early 16th century. Historians use the term medical humanism to define this textual activity, pursued for its own sake.