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V.10.2

HOUSE OF THE PHYSICIANS

Besides the Monks' Infirmary and the sick ward in the
Novitiate,[382] the Plan provides for three other medical installations:
the House of the Physicians, the Medicinal
Herb Garden, and the House for Bloodletting, all of which
are situated in the northeast corner of the monastery next
to the Monks' Infirmary. The House of the Physicians (fig.
410) forms the center of the group. It is separated from the
House for Bloodletting by a wall or fence and has no direct
connection with the Infirmary. The house is small and
almost square in shape (37½ feet by 42½ feet). Its principal
room is designated as "the hall of the physicians" (domus

[ILLUSTRATION]

PLAN OF ST. GALL. HOUSE OF THE PHYSICIANS. AUTHORS' INTERPRETATION

413.A

413.B

GROUND PLAN AND TRANSVERSE SECTION

Our reconstruction of the House of the Physicians is only one choice of several possible alternatives. Despite the inclusion of corner fireplaces
in the physicians' private aisle and the aisle for the critically ill—a feature which elsewhere has called for masonry walls—the exterior walls of
this house could have been entirely of timber (a possibility we have demonstrated in reconstructing the Gardener's House, figs. 427.A-F, where
similar conditions obtain). On the other hand, these walls could also have been built all in masonry, as is shown in the House for Distinguished
Guests (figs. 397.A-F). Above is a third alternative: the entrance wall is timber, all the others are masonry.

medicorum) and is furnished with the customary open fireplace
with louver overhead. The western aisle of the house
is used as a "bedroom for the critically ill" (cubiculum ualde
Infirmorum); the eastern aisle serves as the "dwelling of the
chief physician" (mansio medici ipsius), while the lean-to in
the rear of the house is a "repository for drugs and medicaments"
(armarium pigmentorum). Both the bedroom for the
sick and the physician's quarters are provided with corner
fireplaces and their own privies.

Measuring only 37½ feet by 42½ feet the House of the
Physicians is one of the smaller guest and service buildings.
Its sick room, nevertheless, was large enough to accommodate
eight beds. We should imagine the interior of this
building to have looked very much like the thirteenth
century Hospital of St. Mary's in Chichester, (fig. 343),[383]
except, of course, that the Physicians' House on the Plan
is considerably smaller and its aisles were probably separated
from the common hall in the center by wall partitions
between the posts. Another building, somewhat smaller
than St. Mary's Hospital although still twice the length of
the House of the Physicians, was the Infirmary of the
Abbey of Kirkstall, dating from around 1220 (fig. 412),
whose roof was originally held up by two rows of wooden

[ILLUSTRATION]

PLAN OF ST. GALL. HOUSE OF THE PHYSICIANS. AUTHORS' INTERPRETATION

413.C
In the center: a window admitting light to the room where the pharmaceutical
drugs are stored. To either side: the privies of the physicians and the critically
ill.

413.D
Our assumption that the gable walls were half-timbered is purely conjectural.
They could of course as well have been built in masonry.

413.E
Locating the fireplaces in the outer corners of the aisles keeps the chimney
stacks at a safe distance from the inflammable roof.

413.F
Two trusses, in addition to the gable walls, would have been entirely sufficient
to carry the roof of this relatively small building.

NORTH, SOUTH AND WEST ELEVATIONS AND LONGITUDINAL SECTION

SCALE 1/16 INCH = 1 FOOT [1:192]

posts which were later replaced by masonry arcades.[384] The
House of the Physicians on the Plan is the Carolingian
prototype for this type of building.

It is one of only a few buildings on the Plan in which the
main room with the open fireplace is directly accessible
from the outside.[385] We have reconstructed this side of the
house as a straight timber-framed gable wall (fig. 413A-F),
with infillings of daubed wattlework, reaching to the
ridge of the roof. Because of the presence of corner
fireplaces in the physician's bedroom and in the room for
the critically ill, we have rendered the walls against which
these fireplaces were built in masonry. The architectural
privacy of both the physicians and their critical patients—
attainable only by wall partitions and ceilings separating
their quarters from the common source of light and air in
the center room—created, of course, a need for supplementary
fenestration in the walls of these rooms.

The isolated location of the House of the Physicians and
its rigid separation from all other buildings have given rise
to the opinion that it served primarily as an isolation ward
for patients with communicable diseases.[386] It appears to me
more plausible to assume that it was the place where the
monastery's serfs and workmen were taken when their condition
became critical, since laymen could not be admitted
to the Monks' Infirmary. The monks had their own ward
for persons stricken with acute illness, and this could also
have been used as a separation ward for monks afflicted
with communicable diseases.

The physicians were obviously not only in charge of the
patients who were bedded in the Physician's House, but
also attended to the sick in the adjacent Infirmary of the
Monks and took care of the treatments administered in the
House for Bloodletting. That they were not always from
the ranks of the regular monks may be gathered from Abbot
Adalhard's Directives for the Abbey of Corbie, where two
physicians (medici duo) are listed as laymen.[387] Hildemar, in
his commentary on the Rule, lists as instruments indispensable
to the physician: the bloodletting tools (fleuthomus),
the book of herbs (herbarius liber), the medicaments and
tools required for their preparation (pigmentum ferramenta
quibus incidit), and "all such other similar things with the
aid of which the physician performs his craft of healing"
(et reliqua his similia, quibus medicamen medicus operatur).[388]