Osteoarthritis in the Middle Ages was still not given enough attention as an independent disease. Medicine of that time was just beginning to stand out from other Sciences, to create its own schools.
It was often emphasized that in the Middle Ages, herbal medicine knowledge and medical treatises of that time contained more information on eye diseases than on any other diseases combined. This is quite surprising, since osteoarthritis was common in the Middle Ages, when there was no shortage of hard work. In fact, this «neglect» of osteoarthritis by Medieval doctors could have the same explanation as the «strange silence of Greek doctors». Anthropologists say that an incipient form of osteoarthritis existed in the Middle Ages, but the extremely short life span of our ancestors still did not allow the disease to develop into severe forms. We also note the use of drugs that could be not only useless but also mostly harmful to the body, as well as bloodletting at every opportunity did not give a general understanding of the picture of osteoarthritis.
Despite some progress made, particularly by Arab doctors, medical knowledge developed very slowly in the Middle Ages. On both sides of the Mediterranean, scientists copied the works of Hippocrates and Galen. Often Latin translations of Arabic texts allowed Western scholars to discover new knowledge. However, do not forget that in the Middle Ages, the first medical faculties appeared, including the very first medical faculty of Montpellier, where the first autopsies were performed. These works contributed to the completion of anatomical knowledge that took place in the Renaissance.