“And they debated much about this“: a medical collation on the graduation of medicines through the court of the veguer of the city of Lleida (1407)

Abstract

In the city of Lleida, at the beginning of the 15th century, a collation (meeting) of three doctors took place in the house of a sick man at the request of several of his friends and the attending physician to assess his illness and the treatment that had been given to him, which had caused a hemorrhage. This meeting led to a discussion about the qualities and suitability of the medicine, which caused an altercation between two doctors, both professors at the Faculty of Medicine of Lleida, which ended in a complaint to the court of the veguer of the city. In this paper, we analyse all the details of the case and its relevance for the study of several aspects of medical practice during the late Middle Ages.