Theophilus' Auctoritas: The role of De urinis in the medical curriculum ofthe 12th-13th centuries

The three principles to know, to know how and to know how to be are already condensed in the works of Theophilos (7th-9th centuries). Theophilus' De u rinis was included in Latin translation in the Articella, probably because of its intermediate position between the texts of high doctrinal value by H ippocrates and Galen (lacking, however, a unifying 'theory of urine') and t he epitomes, short manuals without any theoretical background. It thus form s an excellent synthesis of a cultural approach reconciling iatrosophia and techne and offers to the reader a text reconciling the theory and the prac tice, useful to health workers in hospitals, novice beginners and medical s cholars. Thanks to his strong attention to the correlation between symptoms and pathology and to his search for assessment scales, Theophilus became t he author on whom the birth of medical medieval studies was founded.