La grande aventure du savoir médical

The human endeavor for others: medicine passes from one civilization to another, despite wars and conflicts, despite political and economic vicissitudes, and sometimes beyond religious and moral reservations. It is this transmission of medical knowledge, from Antiquity to Modern Times, that the exhibition explores.

From Greece to Rome, from Rome to Alexandria, from Alexandria to Baghdad, from Baghdad to Padua—the medical knowledge has the book as its principal tool, a book that also bears witness to the extraordinary continuity of the ethics of the medical profession, notably in its relationship with patients. Medical texts remain alive, as evidenced by numerous works annotated and commented on by physicians across generations, sometimes in different languages.

Between the 7th and 16th centuries CE, the Arab-Muslim world profoundly shapes medicine through major evolutions in both concepts and techniques. This long period opens and closes with a linguistic revolution: the shift from Greek to Arabic, then from Arabic to Latin, two pivotal moments of questioning and debate.

In the five themes of the exhibition route—translate, transmit, debate, experiment, care—sumptuously illuminated manuscripts, incunabula, and printed works illustrated with engravings occupy the heart of the presentation, alongside objects used in pharmacopoeia and surgery. Alongside the patrimonial collection, digital animations invite visitors to discover the geography of this medical adventure, its great figures, their theories about the body, their practices of consultation, their recommendations for preserving good health, and the preparation of compounded medicines...

The exhibition aims to raise awareness of medical knowledge as the product of a centuries-spanning exchange of people and influences, advocating tolerance and openness to the other in our era of identity retreat and certainties.