Glossitis can cause glossitis, which tends to be painful, smooth and shiny. Bacterial, viral or fungal infections can cause glossitis. "Candida" species are involved in median rhomboid glossitis. Syphilis is now relatively rare, but the tertiary stage can cause diffuse glossitis and atrophy of lingual papillae, termed "syphilitic glossitis", "luetic glossitis" or "atrophic glossitis of tertiary syphilis". It is caused by Treponema pallidum and is a sexually transmitted infection. Many conditions can cause glossitis via malnutrition or malabsorption, which creates the nutritional deficiencies described above, although other mechanisms may be involved in some of those conditions listed. A painful tongue may
Medieval medicine of Western Europe believed that it took longer for the soul to leave as it was an integral part of the body. Though medical practice had become a professional and institutionalized field, the argument of the soul in the case of dissection shows that the foundation of religion was still an important part of medical thought in the late Middle Ages. Medicine was not a formal area of study in early medieval medicine, but it grew in response to the proliferation of translated Greek and Arabic medical texts in the 11th century. Western Europe also experienced economic, population and urban growth in the