Many friars learned some practical medicine before they took the habit, and from early days the orders of friars encouraged those who had studied medicine at university (as well as students of philosophy, law or theology) to join them. e Dominican Jordan of Saxony made attracting such students central to the mission of the nascent order in England. e relative backwardness in English universities of the Faculty of Medicine meant that most students of medicine who became friars were educated in France or Italy instead. Some medical friars reached the highest ranks in their orders. Crescentius da Iesi, Franciscan minister general from 1244 to 1247, had studied and practised medicine before entering the order in his middle age. ere were other less well documented and local ways of acquiring medical knowledge in the friaries. Where there was one friar with medical knowledge or skills, there were others who might be taught as pupils within the friary. e friaries, as they grew and beneted from lay patronage of their houses, built inrmaries, just as the Benedictine and other monastic orders had done before them. e inrmarer of a friary would have been expected to manage the care of the sick friar (and perhaps lay patients too) or supervise recovery after regular bloodletting.2 Despite the catastrophic scattering or destruction of the libraries of the friars at the dissolution of the late 1530s, there is sucient evidence from surviving catalogues to show that some friaries at least had medical books. ese would have served as reservoirs of medical knowledge for those friars who used them. But this argument for medical knowledge amongst the friars is necessarily based more on supposition rather than hard evidence.