Sign conceptions in medicine in the Latin Middle Ages

The reflections on signs by medieval physicians rely strongly upon classical medical texts and upon Greek and Arabic early medieval sources. The first Latin translations of Hippocrates' and Galen's works date back to the 5th and 6th centuries. Many of the medical treatises, excerpts and fragments from the early Middle Ages testify to the continuous attention paid by physicians to the detection of symptoms. This contribution will show how medieval physicians, thanks to a special attention paid to signs and their classification, tried to transcend the boundaries of sense perception.