Early life and education
In the history of physiology, Arnaldus de Villa Nova occupies the ground between patient observation and the larger claims it makes possible.
Arnaldus de Villa Nova was born at Grau in 1258. His recorded nationality is Crown of Aragon. He was educated at Faculty of Medicine of Montpellier.
Learning in this period moved through courts, monasteries and madrasas, and a scholar's reach depended on which libraries and translations were within travelling distance.
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His working life was spent at Faculty of Medicine of Montpellier, where the work centred on alchemy, diplomacy and medicine.
Works and contributions
His name is attached above all to translating a number of medical texts from Arabic, including works by Ibn Sina, Abu-l-Salt and Galen. Physiology asks how a living body actually works, and its answers underwrite the whole of modern medicine.
The surviving body of work includes Allocutio Christini, Regimen sanitatis ad regem Aragonum and Rosary of the Philosophers.
That the work was done from Crown of Aragon matters to the story. Science has never been evenly distributed, and where a person is based has always shaped which problems are reachable and whose results get read.
Death and scientific legacy
What that record amounts to is a body of physiology that later workers could build on without re-checking. That is the practical test of a scientific life, and it is a harder one than fame.
Arnaldus de Villa Nova died in 1313, aged 55. What survives is not the reputation but the result: the part of physiology that no longer has to be argued for.
Achievements
- Notable work: Allocutio Christini
- Notable work: Regimen sanitatis ad regem Aragonum
- Notable work: Rosary of the Philosophers
- Notable work: Tractatus de tempore adventus Antichristi ipsius et aliorum scripta coæva
- Held posts at Faculty of Medicine of Montpellier
- Educated at Faculty of Medicine of Montpellier
- Fields of research: alchemy, diplomacy, medicine and medieval philosophy
