Then at every season of the year
There are crowds of guests and travellers here;
Pilgrims and mendicant friars and traders
From the Levant, with figs and wine,
And bands of wounded and sick Crusaders,
Coming back from Palestine.
There were medical and surgical clinics, foundling hospitals, Sisters of Charity, men and women professors—among the latter the famous Trotula—and apothecaries. Dissections were carried out, chiefly upon animals, and human subjects were occasionally used. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the school reached its height, and that remarkable genius, Frederick II, laid down regulations for a preliminary study extending over three years, and a course in medicine for five years, including surgery. Fee tables and strict regulations as to practice were made; and it is specifically stated that the masters were to teach in the schools, theoretically and practically, under the authority of Hippocrates and Galen. The literature from the school had a far-reaching influence. One book on the anatomy of the pig illustrates the popular subject for dissection at that time.(6) The writings, which are numerous, have been collected by De Renzi.(7)
(6) "And dissections of the bodies of swine
As likest the human form divine."—Golden Legend.
(7) S. de Renzi: Collectio Salernitana, 5 vols., Naples,
1852-1859; P. Giacosa: Magistri Salernitani, Turin, 1901.
The "Antidotarium" of Nicolaus Salernitanus, about 1100, became the popular pharmacopoeia of the Middle Ages, and many modern preparations may be traced to it.
The most prominent man of the school is Constantinus Africanus, a native of Carthage, who, after numerous journeys, reached Salernum about the middle of the eleventh century. He was familiar with the works both of the Greeks and of the Arabs, and it was largely through his translations that the works of Rhazes and Avicenna became known in the West.
One work above all others spread the fame of the school—the Regimen Sanitatis, or Flos Medicinae as it is sometimes called, a poem on popular medicine. It is dedicated to Robert of Normandy, who had been treated at Salernum, and the lines begin: "Anglorum regi scripsit schola tota Salerni . . . " It is a hand-book of diet and household medicine, with many shrewd and taking sayings which have passed into popular use, such as "Joy, temperance and repose Slam the door on the doctor's nose." A full account of the work and the various editions of it is given by Sir Alexander Croke,(8) and the Finlayson lecture (Glasgow Medical Journal, 1908) by Dr. Norman Moore gives an account of its introduction into the British Isles.
(8) Regimen Sanitutis Salernitanum; a Poem on the Preservation of
Health in Rhyming Latin Verse, Oxford, D.A. Talboys, 1830.
BYZANTINE MEDICINE
THE second great stream which carried Greek medicine to modern days runs through the Eastern Empire. Between the third century and the fall of Constantinople there was a continuous series of Byzantine physicians whose inspiration was largely derived from the old Greek sources. The most distinguished of these was Oribasius, a voluminous compiler, a native of Pergamon and so close a follower of his great townsman that he has been called "Galen's ape." He left many works, an edition of which was edited by Bussemaker and Daremberg. Many facts relating to the older writers are recorded in his writings. He was a contemporary, friend as well as the physician, of the Emperor Julian, for whom he prepared an encyclopaedia of the medical sciences.